When it comes to raw hype, few games can muster as much energy as a fighting game! Unlike other competitive games, they’re not weighed down by team play or random mechanics. It’s just two players pitting their skills against one another to see who comes out on top!
Out of all the games on the market, few can reach the same levels of excitement that Tekken can!
Twenty years ago, in 1994, the first Tekken released in arcades, and one year later, it released on Playstation. It became a smash hit among fighting game players, and with the release of its sequel, that hype only grew. Come time for Tekken 3, the series had become one of the biggest names in fighting games, right up there with Street Fighter, King of Fighters, and Virtua Fighter.
That’s a lot of fighters.
Like most fighting games in the 90s, the story of Tekken is hidden behind arcade mode endings and the manual. Unlike its contemporaries, however, the story of Tekken has kept on going. At this point, it’s actually the longest lasting continuous video game story out there!
But what’s actually going on? Well, to oversimplify it dramatically: the Mishima family sucks. Heihachi throws his son Kazuya off a cliff because his father, Jinpachi, threw him off a cliff. Hungry for revenge, Kazuya defeats his father in the Tekken tournament and throws him off a cliff. Hungry for revenge, Heihachi defeats his son in the next Tekken tournament and throws him off a cliff… again. So on and so forth. It’s essentially a shitty father and a shitty son being shitty and ruining the world around them.
Well, at least Kazuya never threw Jin off a cliff. Although that’s probably because he never got the chance.
Does that sound ridiculous? That’s because it is. Tekken is an absolutely insane game. Watch just about any arcade mode ending from any game for any character and you’ll see that first hand. For god’s sake, Kuma is a bear that Heihachi taught karate, and at one point, there was a boxing kangaroo and a velociraptor! Tekken is crazy and it embraces that whole-heartedly!
Don’t even get me started on the volleyball or bowling modes.
This same energy applies to the roster of characters. Variety is the name of the game here. You’ve got the members of the Mishima family with their take on Mishima-style karate. There’s Yoshimitsu, a samurai-cyborg-ninja. You can play actual bears with Kuma and Panda. There are even guest characters, like Akuma from Street Fighter and fucking Negan from the Walking Dead!
All of whom you can customize with new costumes, hairstyles, and accessories. Including an actual interactable Jenga tower in Tekken 7.
One small detail I absolutely love is the use of language. Tekken fighters come from all across the world. But they don’t all just speak the same language for no reason. Everyone speaks their native language! French characters speak French, Russians speak Russian, Americans speak English, so on and so forth. It’s an extra level of detail and realism I’ve never seen in another fighting game.
Also, King only speaks Tiger, which is just really funny to me.
As for the actual fighting game, few games are as mechanically deep or complex as Tekken. On paper, it’s simple: you’ve got four buttons, 3D movement, and as of Tekken 7 going forward: a super attack to get you out of a pinch. But then you look at the move list and it suddenly becomes a lot more intimidating. Each character has at least eighty moves or more!
This makes Tekken’s gameplay very freeform in how you approach it. There’s never just one option in a given scenario. It makes combat much more expressive than other games. Once you overcome the admittedly steep learning curve (which has been lessened considerably by Tekken 8) you’ll find yourself in a veritable fighting game playground!
Which goes a long way in making competitive play exciting to watch. Seriously, the pro Tekken scene is insane! Don’t believe me? Check out this video by Core-A Gaming on the Pakistani scene!
Tekken is what peak fighting games look like. Utterly insane, mechanically deep, and consistently exciting! It’s one of the few series that’s consistently gotten better over time, and it shows no signs of slowing down!
Nor do I show any signs of getting better at the game. But if I’m having this much fun getting my ass beat, then I can live with that.
Now, Harada-san, I know we can’t ask for shit. But for your consideration: Tifa Lockheart in Tekken 8. C’mon! Y’know you want to!
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