Adaptation Displacement: Outside Japan, Gon is far better-known as a Tekken 3 character than he is as the star of the manga of the same name.

Dan rankings offer character-specific progression to show off your skills at a glance, with ranks that range from “Beginner” to “True Tekken God. We’d like to think our panda-on-pink-heart emblem struck grave fear into the hearts of our online opponents. Teams get their own leaderboards and emblem designs, emblems being customizable insignia that are proudly displayed on your WTF profile. Teams are groups of up to 100 players, all acting as a unified clan much like an MMO guild. Other bonuses in the WTF are Teams, emblems, and the return of Dan rankings. This will also let players study their own habits, with saved replays after every match, and they can do research on upcoming opponents in the hopes of better preparing themselves to take the tournament. Instead of dull lulls between matches while the players do button checks and test their sticks, commentators can be delving into the character choices, match-up strengths, and potential mind games for each competitor. Namco Bandai hopes that, much like baseball commentators, Tekken commentators will use the WTF as a stats encyclopedia, so they can predict and parse out what the next contender’s style and specialties are.

It seems dang near everything gets tracked: Character usage, win/loss ratios down to the character-specific level, counter attacks, mid-air damage done, juggle-versus-non-juggle damage done, even something called “Chicken Points”-it’s all logged and available for the world to see in WTF, which instantly updates after every online match. With no subscription fee to worry about, players can sync both a PSN and XBLA account’s records to their profile and watch their personal statistics unfold. It’s a system that opens up tons of opportunities for the community, through things like social collaboration, improved livestream commentary, a general bragging rights. Much like the impressive Halo Waypoint seen packaged with Microsoft’s flagship shooter, the World Tekken Federation (or WTF, if you will) tracks players’ every last statistic straight from matches as they happen, then syncs them to the online database for the whole world to see. But chief among the online improvements is the introduction of the World Tekken Federation, a premium-grade, HTML5 web service that Namco Bandai is commendably endowing to players for free. After a bit of a rough patch with Tekken 6’s online play, Namco’s ported over the superior netcode of Soulcalibur V, which promises smoother fights with wired or Wi-Fi play. Our recent hands-on time let us delve into the online side of things, and we undoubtedly liked what we saw.

Tekken tag 2 character usage