10 Years of Pokken Tournament - Sceptile

10 years ago today Pokken Tournament was released by Bandai Namco and The Pokemon Company on the Wii U. Pokken Tournament is a fighting game featuring two distinct combat phases inspired by Pokemon's turn-based battles and Tekken's stellar hand-to-hand combat, all wrapped in a deceptively complex rock-paper-scissors system standing in for type effectiveness and flashy visuals.

Pokken played a major role in my young adult life, having released just after I'd finished high school and moved out to start college. Weekly and monthly Pokken tournaments opened opportunities for me to meet and befriend new people, learn and practice new skills, have something to look forward to every week, and even pushed my 3D skills a bit as I started messing around with fan renders and animations.

I would not be where I am today without this game, and for that it felt right that I should make a new 3D render to celebrate it today. I opted to focus it around Sceptile, who has been my main since the day the game launched due to being the evolved form of one of my all-time favorites, Treecko. One of Pokken Sceptile's most iconic moves is Leaf Storm, a leaping grab that turns into an "izuna drop" attack, spinning the opponent rapidly before slamming them into the ground (think Rock Lee's Primary Lotus). I wanted to really represent that move as best as possible, pushing the character's pose and proportions, then adding the leaves and glow to really sell the speed and power of the move.

Sceptile belongs to The Pokemon Company
Pokken Tournament is developed by Bandai Namco Entertainment and belongs to The Pokemon Company
The rig used in this render was manually extracted from the game files and was not created by me, only posed and rendered
The emblem and background are based on screenshots from the game