The video below shows Boy discovering the Bespin-y qualities of this new environment, unlocked thanks to the collective efforts of Noby Noby players reporting their scores back to Namco. Crushing atmospheric pressure and poisonous clouds of ammonia seem not to be much of a problem here.

For those keeping score, Girl reached the Moon on Feb. 23, four days after the game’s release. Mars was next on May 23, and now Jupiter on Nov. 20. At this rate, I’d say ETA to Saturn is late 2010.

Jupiter Here We Are! [PSN Stores]

And here are the daily winners.

Monday’s winner is Tomasz, who made this brave admission:

Tekken with my bro;
He sat on the controller.
His ass cheeks beat me.

Tuesday’s winner is James, who pays tribute to his favourite Jackie Chan lookalike:

Play dead on the floor
Snake to crane, crane to panther
Lei, drunken master

Wednesday’s winner is jawbreaker982, for this tragic tale:

Circuits fried. Small fire.
Turns out I can’t build my own.
Really need that stick.

Thursday’s winner is Parabol, who speaks nothing but the truth:

she has chainsaw hands,
jet pack rocket wings and boobs,
no way she can lose.

Friday’s winner is Lance McDonald, who made me a little sick in my mouth:

Wow, look at those boobs,
Biggest so far in Tekken,
Oh, Bob, I love you.

Congratulations everyone. I’ll be in touch later today to organise delivery of your prize.

From Monday to Friday this week, we’ll be giving away one Tekken 6 Arcade Stick Edition on Xbox 360 each day. It comes with a wireless arcade stick from stick specialists Hori, a 100-page art book and, of course, a copy of the game.

To win, you’ll need to once more impress us with your literary creativity. Yes, it’s haiku time again on Kotaku. We want you to write an ode to Tekken (or perhaps just fighting games in general) in haiku form. And the haiku form we’re counting is three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Leave your haiku in the comments below. You must leave it before midnight today to be eligible for today’s draw. Check back tomorrow at 10am to see if you’ve won and, if you didn’t, to enter tomorrow’s draw with a brand new haiku.

Please note: As per usual, only one entry per day is allowed. If you leave multiple entries, only the first haiku will be considered.

Thursday’s winner is Parabol, who speaks nothing but the truth:

she has chainsaw hands,
jet pack rocket wings and boobs,
no way she can lose.

UPDATE: This competition is now closed. Friday’s winner will be announced shortly.

[Terms and Conditions]

From Monday to Friday this week, we’ll be giving away one Tekken 6 Arcade Stick Edition on Xbox 360 each day. It comes with a wireless arcade stick from stick specialists Hori, a 100-page art book and, of course, a copy of the game.

To win, you’ll need to once more impress us with your literary creativity. Yes, it’s haiku time again on Kotaku. We want you to write an ode to Tekken (or perhaps just fighting games in general) in haiku form. And the haiku form we’re counting is three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Leave your haiku in the comments below. You must leave it before midnight today to be eligible for today’s draw. Check back tomorrow at 10am to see if you’ve won and, if you didn’t, to enter tomorrow’s draw with a brand new haiku.

Please note: As per usual, only one entry per day is allowed. If you leave multiple entries, only the first haiku will be considered.

Wednesday’s winner is jawbreaker982, for this tragic tale:

Circuits fried. Small fire.
Turns out I can’t build my own.
Really need that stick.

UPDATE: Thursday’s draw is now closed. Stay tuned for Friday’s at 10am.

[Terms and Conditions]

From Monday to Friday this week, we’ll be giving away one Tekken 6 Arcade Stick Edition on Xbox 360 each day. It comes with a wireless arcade stick from stick specialists Hori, a 100-page art book and, of course, a copy of the game.

To win, you’ll need to once more impress us with your literary creativity. Yes, it’s haiku time again on Kotaku. We want you to write an ode to Tekken (or perhaps just fighting games in general) in haiku form. And the haiku form we’re counting is three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Leave your haiku in the comments below. You must leave it before midnight today to be eligible for today’s draw. Check back tomorrow at 10am to see if you’ve won and, if you didn’t, to enter tomorrow’s draw with a brand new haiku.

Please note: As per usual, only one entry per day is allowed. If you leave multiple entries, only the first haiku will be considered.

Tuesday’s winner is James, who pays tribute to his favourite Jackie Chan lookalike:

Play dead on the floor
Snake to crane, crane to panther
Lei, drunken master

UPDATE: Wednesday’s draw is now closed! Stay tuned for Thursday’s at 10am.

[Terms and Conditions]

From Monday to Friday this week, we’ll be giving away one Tekken 6 Arcade Stick Edition on Xbox 360 each day. It comes with a wireless arcade stick from stick specialists Hori, a 100-page art book and, of course, a copy of the game.

To win, you’ll need to once more impress us with your literary creativity. Yes, it’s haiku time again on Kotaku. We want you to write an ode to Tekken (or perhaps just fighting games in general) in haiku form. And the haiku form we’re counting is three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Leave your haiku in the comments below. You must leave it before midnight today to be eligible for today’s draw. Check back tomorrow at 10am to see if you’ve won and, if you didn’t, to enter tomorrow’s draw with a brand new haiku.

Please note: As per usual, only one entry per day is allowed. If you leave multiple entries, only the first haiku will be considered.

Monday’s winner is Tomasz, who made this brave admission:

Tekken with my bro;
He sat on the controller.
His ass cheeks beat me.

UPDATE: Tuesday’s draw is now closed! Stay tuned for Wednesday’s at 10am.

[Terms and Conditions]

Part 1: Harada Explains: Why Tekken Is Different From Other Fighting Games
Part 2: How Katsuhiro Harada Achieved Game Balance In Tekken 6

The lag in Tekken 6’s online play is unacceptably bad and Namco Bandai knows it. They’ve vaguely said that a downloadable patch will be available “as soon as it has passed rigorous testing procedures”. Clearly, they did not do enough rigorous testing on one of the game’s key components before releasing it.

Incidentally, when we asked you what you wanted to ask Harada-san, the question over online play was raised. So when I asked him if he thinks there’s a market for online play in fighting games… he had to stop and think about it.

He turned to look at the plasma TV on the wall and didn’t say anything for, like, 15 seconds. I was fully aware that he was pondering his answer, but it was awkward because I only had three minutes left to ask a lot of questions, and here was Mr Tekken, intensely watching a demo of… Tekken. When he finally spoke, he brought attention to the ramifications of online play on something relatively unique to fighting games: atmosphere.

It’s a good question. Traditionally in arcades, you would often fight side-by-side against someone you didn’t know. You also get to fight side-by-side with the home console version, but you are fighting against family and friends. You always know your opponent, so the atmosphere isn’t the same. Now you’re online against a friend or maybe someone you don’t know, but you’re far away — you can’t see their reaction or anything.

He likens the offline experience to martial arts tournaments — just being there as a spectator is exciting, and that’s what makes them popular, he said. “The whole atmosphere, the people fighting, the people watching, the interaction between the two fighters … that is something that isn’t present in online and it’s sad because it would really add to the experience.”

Harada is candid, perhaps unintentionally, about Tekken 6’s substandard netcode. “Fighting games aren’t really tailored to online play at the moment because of the lag,” he said. “But as technology evolves and the infrastructure gets better, and you have much less latency, perhaps that kind of participation — whether that be avatars watching or whatever — can be recreated.”

Here’s a video demonstrating the lagginess:

So is technology (or the lack thereof) at least partly to blame for the crap online experience in Tekken 6? How the game recreates that “participation” remains to be seen, but Harada is embracing the challenge of delivering a seamless online multiplayer experience, and this is apparent in his answer to my final question:

“So what’s next for Mr Tekken?”

He laughs, but I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a nervous laugh. Maybe he’s happy that he can finally get rid of me. Maybe it’s because I called him “Mr Tekken” to his face. Unfortunately, his answer is more obliging than revealing:

There are two products we’re working on at the moment that haven’t been announced yet, so we can’t say much. But one thing I will say is [we’re focusing on] the versus aspect, and it’s not necessarily one player versus one.

How would you interpret that? And what’s your Tekken 6 experience been like so far?

Tekken 6 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 was released in Australia on November 5. Namco Bandai did not give me a copy of the game. I have not played Tekken since I was a kid, and even then I sucked at it.

From Monday to Friday this week, we’ll be giving away one Tekken 6 Arcade Stick Edition on Xbox 360 each day. It comes with a wireless arcade stick from stick specialists Hori, a 100-page art book and, of course, a copy of the game.

To win, you’ll need to once more impress us with your literary creativity. Yes, it’s haiku time again on Kotaku. We want you to write an ode to Tekken (or perhaps just fighting games in general) in haiku form. And the haiku form we’re counting is three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Leave your haiku in the comments below. You must leave it before midnight today to be eligible for today’s draw. Check back tomorrow at 10am to see if you’ve won and, if you didn’t, to enter tomorrow’s draw with a brand new haiku.

Please note: As per usual, only one entry per day is allowed. If you leave multiple entries, only the first haiku will be considered.

UPDATE: Monday’s draw is now closed! Stay tuned for Tuesday’s at 10am.

[Terms and Conditions]

On his official blog, the actor writes, “Tales of Vesperia is coming out on one thing after another: Xbox 360, then PS3, and now upcoming, goes on sale even on the Wii. More shortly, the feature film anime version is also opening in theatres (But, I, I’m not in it…), and after that, there’s also a CD.”

It’s possible the voice actor confused Tales of Vesperia with Tales of Graces — there are a lot of Tales to keep straight!

Koyama voices the character of Duke in Tales of Vesperia, which was originally released as a timed Xbox 360 exclusive in 2008. The PS3 version was released in September 2009.

力也の気持ち [−小山力也公式ブログ−声優グランプリweb via オレ的ゲーム速報＠刃]

For Part 1 of the interview, see here: Harada Explains: Why Tekken Is Different From Other Fighting Games
 
From a story perspective, new characters are easily justified by their individual motives for fighting in the tournament. A pink-haired robot, a fat martial arts legend and a Spanish bull fighter are among eight characters introduced in Tekken 6, bringing the total number of characters in the fighting game series to 42. Harada says that achieving game balance with so many characters came down to three things.

“We have a specific team for game balancing, so there’s a few people we have assigned to each character and also the game in general,” Harada explains. “They’re solely dedicated to that aspect of the game.”

Fan feedback is a recurring theme throughout the interview, and Harada refers to it again here by saying that subjective data from a worldwide fan base is an important influence in balancing the game. He also says that the team depends on objective data pulled from servers. “The arcade versions are all tied to a central server, so we’re able to gain a lot of objective data about the win-loss ratios for each character, and other data like perfect wins.”

“Balancing [the game] is something that we can do because the Tekken team has been doing it for close to 15 years now.”

A dedicated team, hard data and experience. If you’ve already picked up the game, do you think they got it right?