Tekken
Year Of Release: 1994
Studio: Namco
Description
Tekken was one of the most notable 3D one on one fighting games of the early to mid 1990’s. While Sega’s Virtua Fighter may have beaten it to arcades. Its more than fair to say that, Tekken offered a more “spectacular” level of presentation as well as offering a simple, but very well designed control system. The game would be a huge hit and when it was released for the home, would be a key game in making the Sony Playstation a must own console for many gamers when it was released in 1995.
Tekken looked amazing back in 1994. It boasted incredible character models and the levels were much more “fleshed” out than what Virtua Fighter offered. As well as looking amazing though, Namco worked very hard in coming up with a complex story for the game. The story of the game centres around the Mishima family. Heihachi Mishima is the powerful leader of the Mishima family and conglomerate, he is at war with his son, Kazuya. When he was only ten years old, Kazuya was dropped off a cliff by Heihachi to see if he was strong enough to take over from his father one day. A bleeding, broken and dying Kazuya is granted great power by an evil entity to seek revenge! Fast forward 21 years and we have the King Of The Iron Fist Tournament where Kazuya is the undefeated champion and is waiting for his chance to battle his father. The story actually is pretty cool and each character has their own reasons for entering the tournament. This and Mortal Kombat are probably the deepest fighting games when it comes to their story.
Namco wanted to change things up when it came to the game play and they certainly did that. Rather than have attacks based on power, Street Fighter for example has light to hard kicks and punches. Or using a high and low attack system like in Mortal Kombat. Tekken has an interesting control scheme that sees you using four buttons. Each button is for a limb. So you have a different button for each arm and a different button for each leg. It sounds odd, but it works very well and the special moves for each character are easily done. Namco crafted a wonderful game play style here it’s so good that pretty much 20 years later the Tekken series has not changed a great deal.
Current High Score: NA
Related Titles
Tekken would get many sequels over the years. Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 would be released into arcades in 1996 and 1998. With both games being ported to the Sony Playstation. Securing the Tekken series as an exclusive for so many years was a huge deal for Sony.
Tekken 4 and Tekken 5 would also be released into arcades, but the home versions this time would be on the Playstation 2. Tekken 5 would also get a port on the Playstation Portable and Playstation 3.
Tekken would stop being a Playstation exclusive when it came to home consoles. As for Tekken 6 as well as being on the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 owners would also be able to get in on the Tekken action. This though would not be the first non-Sony system to get a Tekken game. As there was a game called Tekken Advanced released for the Game Boy Advance.
There have been a few spin off games from the main series’ most notably the Tekken Tag Tournament games. But as well as this there has been a cross over game called Street Fighter X Tekken. Despite having Tekken in the title this is most certainly a Street Fighter game.
Due to Tekken’s incredibly popularity there has been a ton of merchandise as well as this there has been three Tekken movies released so far.
