flash-hammer's Full Review: Tekken for PlayStation 1
Tekken was the PlayStation's answer to the Saturn's Virtua Fighter. Released upon launch by Namco, this, along with other titles such as Ridge Racer, led to a great partnership between the two Japanese companies that blew away the rivalry from Sega's doomed console and Nintendo's N64.
Tekken gave the PS1 2 sequels, and the PS2 has already seen a further 2 games in this incredibly popular 3D fighting game series. But how did the series begin?
The story of the game, is that the Mishima Corporation, lead by the cruel Heihachi Mishima, is organising a Martial arts tournament called 'The King of the Iron Fist'. The winner takes control of this huge multimillion dollar company. The game starts off with 8 entrants playable, but a further 8, and then Heihachi and another mysterious fighter can be unlocked.
The entrants are as follows:
Kazuya Mishima,Heihachi's own son, whom the boss decided to throw off a mountain to test his strength, while Kazuya was still a child.Bearing the scars of that incident, he enters the tournament to exact his revenge, as well as take down another entrant by the name of Paul, who is the only fighter ever to have held Kazuya to a draw.
King, A Mexican heavyweight wreslter with a heart of gold.He gains extra-ordinary strength when he dons his Jaguar mask, and he is out to gain money for an orphanage.
Nina Williams,Nina is an Irish born assasin hired to take down the Mishima's. She will face tough opposition not only from the great fighters, but the fact that one of them is her own sister. As a little side-note, Nina has her own solo game in the works for release soon.
Yoshimitsu, A leader of a gang centuries old, this odd fighter sports a sword, and is a robin hood type character who uses his gang to steal from the rich and give to the poor and sees the tournament as a way to gain money fast. He
Paul Phoenix,An American motorbike fan and karate champion, who is in the tournament for no reason other than he wants to prove his skills as a fighter. The chance of a rematch with Kazuya also plays a role in his entry.
Jack, a hulking Russian android soldier, here to prove himself before getting mass production okayed. To prove himself, he has to assasinate Heihachi Mishima.
Marshal Law, The game's obligatory Bruce Lee clone, who wants to start his own dojo, and sees the King of Iron fist as a great way to get it started.
Michelle Chang, a half Native American, half Chinese young woman, who is out for revenge for her father's murder, as well as to reclaim her tribe's treasures from thieving Kunimitsu.
Lee Chao-Lan ,Heihachi's adopted son who is now his bodyguard, sent out to stop Kazuya
Kunimitsu, A renegade member of Yoshimitsu's clan, who enters to try and steal his treasured sword, and has stolen the tribal treasures of Michelle.
Prototype Jack ,An early development model of Jack, owned by Heihachi and sent out to neatralize the thread of Jack.
Wang Jin-Rei,despite being Michelle's gramps, he works for Heichachi, and enters the tournament to take down any who look dangerous.
Kuma, Heihachi's pet bear.
Ganryu, sumo wrestler and associate of Kazuya. Out to try and impress Michelle.
Armour King, King's Rival,who has a similar taste in wrestling and supernatural Jaguar masks. Intentions is revenge for King taking his eye in battle.
Anna Williams, Nina's little sister who is here to take her down. Part of a long running Williams family feud.
There is also another side to Kazuya that can be unlocked...
The game's controls look like this:
Square: Left Punch
Triangle: Right Punch
X:Left Kick
Circle: Right Kick
This control system was fairly innovative at the time, due to the fact that it used multiple punch/kick buttons, but didn't distinguish them by strength, issuing a button to a limb.
They respond decently for the most part, but there have been occasions where the kicks seem to have taken their time, though that might be down to the actual kicking motions.
Graphically the game is a bit here and there. While some fighters look decent for a first generation PlayStation title, others dont. The best looking fighters are the most natural ones, such as Kazuya and Nina, but Kuma just looks terrible. Paul's hair is also painful to look at, and the 'mitsu's arent exactly eye candy either. the backgrounds also deserve some stick. While it was nice of them to do all different sorts of backgrounds, city rooftops, mountainside clearings, arctic...places, they are all terribly boring with nothing to make them remotely memorable, other than the strangeness of some of them (the arctic?)
The sound in the game also isnt anything to write home about. The music is dull and uninspiring. All of it. The sounds of hits connecting also dont sound right. While this may seem like a really picky gripe, I ended up constantly putting the TV on mute and putting a CD on due to the disapointing sound the game offered.
The game just hasnt aged well at all. Possibly because I am now used to the sequels, but the game just seems so slow and ugly nowadays that I can barely bring myself to play it.
Faults in the game are not hard to find. The collision detection is less than spot on, in fact on a good few occasions hits havent connected when I felt they should have.
The characters on offer are also mostly poor. Paul is Streetfighter's Guile dressed as Ken. Kazuya is the child of SF's Ryu and Sagat. Nina is Virtua Fighter's Sarah Bryant. Yoshimitsu just looks stupid, and doesnt actually seem to use his sword. And Kuma is a bear. Yes, a bear.
The game does have its good points, the individual character endings, in the form of short CG films, are excellent for the time, and the game lays the foundations for a great story that runs throughout the series.
But the gameplay lets the game down. I mean, if slow, clunky fighting is your game, then by all means look into this. The Tekken series has always fell inbetween the strict reality of Virtua Fighter and the ki-projectile tossing of Streetfighter in terms of realism, and while on later series entries the game perfected this, here it seems more like it cant decide which to go for. There are no projectile attacks in the game, but fantasy elements, such as the lightning that surrounds Heihachi's fists (a terrible looking effect) make sure it isnt totally real. But the moves executed by the majority of the cast are just not interesting, and a lot of fights can end up looking more like drunken pub brawls than highly trained martial arts battles.
To be honest, I think Namco were lucky. The only real competition this game had in the 3D fighter stakes on the PlayStation in the early days was the woeful Battle Arena Toshinden, had it been up against some stiffer competition from the bat, I wonder if we would have seen the (far better in most cases) sequels that really made the game a household name for those even remotely into videogames.
If you are a fan of the series, and the game is really cheap, it is probably worth it just to see where the whole thing started out, but if you are looking for a good 3D fighter for the PSX, I would go for Tekken 2 long before this.
Classic one-on-one fighting game Play one of eight well-established characters Lots of combos and special moves to learn Lays the groundwork for the p...More at Amazon Marketplace
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