Accessible Brawler Rising Thunder Could Come to PS4

But it may take a while

by Sammy Barker Sun 9th Aug 2015

Rising Thunder is getting a lot of attention right now. The free-to-play fighting game – which is being made by EVO founders Tom and Tony Cannon alongside ex-Capcom veteran Seth Killian – is attempting to make the historically impenetrable genre more accessible, and it could yet point a dragon punch at the PlayStation 4.

The title does away with complex inputs, distilling the brawling to its basest form. With attacks connected to a countdown timer, you'll need to know when to initiate certain manoeuvres rather than how. And for those of you that prefer to play on consoles, developer Radiant Entertainment has hinted that a port could happen in the future.

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"Right now the team is focusing on getting the game balanced and working; after that I'm sure that they'll consider console ports," a spokesperson told us, before adding: "But it may be a while!" The game is currently in beta on the PC where it's received a rather warm welcome. Would you like to see this throw a fireball to the PS4? Become a new challenger in the comments section below.

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.

1
LieutenantFatman
Sun 9th Aug 2015

Looks OK, but I just want Tekken & Street Fighter 5 already!

2
get2sammyb
Sun 9th Aug 2015

@LieutenantFatman Me too!

3
ShogunRok
Sun 9th Aug 2015

I've been keeping a slight eye on this for a while, and it does look cool. I think it'll definitely come to consoles sooner or later if it's an initial success on PC.

4
dellyrascal
Sun 9th Aug 2015

Looks better than Rise of the robots at least...

Seriously though, could well be a decent little title, if done right.. Although how they will moneytise the game concerns me a little, being free to play...

But fingers crossed...

5
DerMeister
Sun 9th Aug 2015

@LieutenantFatman Amen! Just give me a T7 release date and everything will be golden.

6
Matroska
Mon 10th Aug 2015

I've heard some fairly bad to middling things about this from the fighting games sites I go on. To be honest, I don't really think execution is that much of a barrier to entry. While it's true that a totally new player to Street Fighter probably won't be able to do dragon punches right away, there's pretty much no complex execution in something like Tekken. It's just press a single button and perhaps a single direction at the same time, yet Street Fighter is far more popular than Tekken. If making moves be doable with just one button was the secret ingredient, Soul Calibur wouldn't be a dead series. Yeah there are more complex moves in there, but by and large you can play characters properly without dong some insane KoF inputs.

Also, when you see a new player or a bad player, it's not so much the fact they can't reliably do a dragon punch that's the giveaway, it's the fact they keep jumping all over the place, doing the same move over and over again even if it's not getting them anywhere, that they never block, that they don't understand spacing. This game doesn't really teach any of that, it just removes the very slight execution barrier that isn't even in a load of fighting games anyway.

And yeah, I'd like to chip in with a "please announce a release date for Tekken 7" as well. I'm really looking forward to that game.

7
Matroska
Mon 10th Aug 2015

As negative as all that sounds, it would be cool if they release RT on PS4 and it becomes the fighting game equivalent of Rocket League. I'm a bit concerned about the specs needed, though. The recommended specs on PC are pretty damn high.

8
LieutenantFatman
Mon 10th Aug 2015

@Matroska Actually, Tekken has sold considerably better than Street Fighter over the years. Sales for all Tekken games are approaching 46 million. While Street Fighter sales are approximately 36 million. That includes all the super, hyper ultra etc versions of each SF game they pump out. I love both games but Tekken is more popular.

9
Matroska
Mon 10th Aug 2015

Well it says here that Tekken 6 has sold "more than 3.5 million copies worldwide".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekken_6#Reception

Or if you'd count TTT2 as the latest entry that's just 1.35 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekken_Tag_Tournament_2#Reception

Street Fighter IV's variations have sold over 8 million (3rd paragraph)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_IV

SF's series sales are going to be lower since the first SF only came out in Japan and only on the TurboGrafx. Meanwhile the first Tekken was on the PS1 worldwide. The first two versions of SFIII were only on the Dreamcast. So really those SF numbers are all SFII and SFIV iterations compared to 6 Tekkens (some with multiple iterations too), TTT and TTT2. No idea if SF is getting boosted by the EX games or SFxT or not.

Then you have people that continue to play the game online. USF4 has 4 times the players of TTT2 online. T6 isn't even on that list.
http://www.eventhubs.com/stats/

At EVO 2015 there were 2227 players that entered for USF4 compared to just 458 for Tekken 7. No other Tekken game featured.
http://www.esreality.com/post/2745164/evolution-2015-entry-numbers-out/

Sorry about the rant, well I hope it didn't come across as a rant at all, but as much as I like Tekken and as much as Tekken 2 is one of the most nostalgic games for me, SF is ridiculously more popular. I think the only place that Tekken really outdoes SF is South Korea.