Pika pika, motherf...

Over the last 20 years we've seen Pokemon take on numerous forms from Game Boy RPGs to trading cards to cartoons but NEVER a full-blown arcade style fighting game... Least not until now... Well, last year if you were in Japan and saw the actual arcade machines which I did not. For those that don't know what Pokemon are, they are little creatures that fight each other and get caught by trainers that make them compete in battles and tournaments. Some say Pokemon promotes animal violence and cruelty but frankly, it's completely fictional and like saying Mega Man promotes building powerful death machines that'll doom us all or Mario trains us to take drugs and kill defenseless turtles. C'mon, pretty much ANYTHING can be turned into controversial nowadays...

"Oh my God, video game developers have gone too far by making cute animals battle each other! Only Godzilla monsters can do that! Quick, let's rally and blame the Mortal Kombat guys for this wave of violence again!"
-Angry parents

So you get to choose your Pokemon and battle out in a single battle or a full set of leagues and tournaments where you level up in rank and become more powerful and unravel this story about a black Mewtwo (a really powerful psychic type of Pokemon) draining the synergy between Pokemon and their trainers. Unfortunately there isn't a basic arcade mode where you can beat several characters and unlock more playable characters. And that is where my only real complaint for this game is, that there's like around 1,000 different species of Pokemon now (At least 700, there WAS only 151 when I played the original Game Boy games) and you only get to choose as 1 of less than 20 Pokemon to play. As much as I like several of the Pokemon in this game, it would've been cool to play as Blastoise, Totodile, Spheal, Mightyena, Zapdos, Marowak, Golem, Farfetch'd, Ditto (who'd copy whoever he's fighting), Meowth, Persian, Sandslash, Raichu, Gyarados, oh my God I remembered more than I thought I did...

"You, sir, are a grown ass adult with issues!"
-Pikachu

"No, the people that draw Gardevoir with actual woman parts have issues. I'm just misunderstood and better than most people give me credit for, you little douche. But I still love how cute you are!"
-Mad Wolf

So how do I ultimately feel about Pokken? It's a Pokemon game I've been waiting since the late 90s to see and it's cool to finally see it come to be. Sure, it could use a bigger roster of Pokemon but it's great how it is. Would've also been better with an arcade mode but Pokken well deserves 4 out of 5 Pikachus in a Lucha Libre outfit... Seriously though, why is there a Pika Libre character?! Why not Mightyena/Poochyena?! Ahhh well, that's another thing I would've done differently. At least they gave us Nia, a cute although very talkative advisor/cheerleader that reminds me a bit of an Anime version of ArktikVixen, and that's awesome in my book.