Many different things have been heard & said concerning Namco and GameCube. Being the GameCube freaks we are, PGC has been on top of it all the way. Awhile back, there were a myriad of reports saying that Tekken Tag &/or Ridge Racer was coming to GameCube. Then, although Namco had nothing for GC at E3 2001, a source from the company hinted to PGC that Soul Calibur 2 & Tekken 4 could be coming to GameCube. A month later, many were still dubious & Louie the Cat let rumors fly that one, if not both games were almost certainly hitting the Cube.

One day after Louie gave up the goods on Namco, IGN’s janitor & rumors editor, Ed came scrambling to clean the catbox with a report on Namco all his own:

“The truth is that anonymous insiders claim to have actually seen a version of Tekken Tag Tournament running on Nintendo's hardware months ago, but for reasons unknown Namco decided not to show it at E3.”

Very interesting. Ed also suggested that Ridge Racer is still probably coming but apparently from some outsourced development group. NST handled the N64 port of Ridge Racer, though there is indication that the company is currently under heavy pressure from NCL to finish Wave Race Blue Storm…

Whether or not Tekken Tag makes its way to GameCube (and we hope that it does) it is pretty certain that Soul Calibur and Tekken 4. Soon after, Computer & Videogames also chimed in with a new report on Namco. Essentially, the article echoed claims of Soul Calibur 2 ("[Soul Calibur 2] will almost certainly end up on Gamecube,") and Tekken 4, though stated both were being negotiated for X-Box as well.

Since these reports on other websites have yielded updated info, PGC is happy to discuss what little info we’ve gathered. Louie would not divulge his sources (he’s a little bit cross that Billy has left him alone…again and put up a controversial poll about him) but claims that he’s collected his Namco info from a few sources. Apparently so have Ed the Janitor & C&VG. That’s a lot of people all catching the same vibe – good Namco support.

In addition to Louie & his secrets, PGC consulted some additional sources who all repeated: Soul Calibur 2 is pretty much a sure thing for GameCube. It may be very possible that Namco could be considering the game for X-Box but even if it happens, to our understanding it wouldn’t necessarily be at the expense of a GameCube version. According to Louie, Namco is devoting about as much support to Nintendo as it is Sony, with attention to Microsoft still somewhat uncertain.

Tekken has enjoyed a prosperous life on Sony consoles, though with Namco enthusiastic about GameCube, we think there's a very good chance it could happen. Here again, Namco are allegedly giving adequate resources to Nintendo and what better way than to bring Tekken to a Nintendo console? Since there is already a Tekken Advance confirmed (and oh how sweet that will be), let’s hope GameCube will get the love too. Both Tekken Tag and Tekken 4 are supposedly considered, so it’s possible we’ll get one or the other...or both.

Louie says he hasn’t heard anything about Tekken Tag for awhile but has heard about Tekken 4 more recently and from more than one source. At any rate, we’ve added game profiles for Tekken 4 and Soul Calibur 2.