The original Sony PlayStation was an absolute treasure trove of fighting games. You had all the big hitters from the 16-bit era like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and an onslaught of original titles that would later become iconic franchises. The first really big 3D fighting game was Virtua Fighter. That was a Sega exclusive though and had no hopes of releasing for the PlayStation. Sony needed an answer, and they got one in the form of Tekken from developer Namco. This was a pretty big hit in the arcades, but in the West it was mostly known from it’s home console port. This just so happens to be the topic of today’s review. The Tekken sequels are often heralded as the best fighting games for the console. So how does the original hold up? Let’s check it out.
I’ll be honest. I’ve never been a huge Tekken fan. I enjoyed the second title in the arcades but the original was always kind of a blind spot for me. It’s not that I didn’t know about it, rather, I didn’t care. So today I’m going in mostly blind with just knowledge of the sequels.
Tekken takes place in modern Japan. You select from one of eight fighters as they compete in a tournament called the Iron Fist. They’re all competing to become known as the best fighter in the world. There’s somewhat interesting backstory to accompany each of the characters’ plights, but honestly, I really struggled to care. There’s no real hook here in my opinion. This isn’t typically necessary but in this case the setting and characters are a bit barebones. At least the intro FMV is neat. It hardly makes up for the fact that Tekken feels generic in it’s stylistic approach even when compared to it’s contemporaries.
Okay so let’s check out the character roster. It’s kind of generic, but the grungy early 3D look is a bit different from everything else at the time. Unfortunately it means everyone is real ugly. It’s not just their character portraits either; in game they’re best described as uncanny valley. I think Namco just wanted to have facial textures no matter how bad they were. Anyway. You have your basic spiky haired strongmen which include Jack and Paul, two Bruce Lee inspired guys in Kazuya and Law, the obligatory women with Michelle and Nina, and more. The others are a bit more unique. King for example wears cheetah head mask. Yoshimitsu is rather abstract as he wears a Hannya mask and uses samurai swords. Aside from the last two everyone is pretty generic and a little boring if I’m honest.
This home console port does actually contain a host of unlockable characters though. Many of these guys are pretty close clones to the main fighters, but there are a few unique ones. Even Heihachi, the final boss, is playable but you have to complete arcade mode in less than five minutes. It’s easier said than done, and honestly, he’s not different enough from the other guys to make it worthwhile. Still, the fact that Namco included eight additional hidden characters that weren’t in the arcade version is super neat. Namco did put in a lot of extra effort for this port.
Gameplay is the main focus in any fighter, and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t even touched upon this one yet. Tekken is a 3D fighting game that’s very typical of the era. You compete with another character (be it controlled by human or the CPU) in a best of three series of matches. Tekken stays more grounded in reality compared to it’s contemporaries. It’s loosely based on real martial arts so punches, kicks, and throws are your main means of victory. There are special moves, but these too are mostly grounded in reality with a variety of strikes and acrobatic feats that don’t seem completely out of place in the real world.
Tekken’s main hook is that the main face buttons are designated to a different limb when attacking. You can strike with your left/right fist, or your left/right leg. This is actually a pretty unique system in the genre. Typically you would have multiple strengths of punches and kicks, but Tekken just switches up limbs. This allows for a deeper counter system. If you can predict which limb your foe will strike with you can use the opposite to damage them before they can hit you. This is the high point of Tekken. Unfortunately it never gets more deep than, say, Virtua Fighter. Reading your opponent is important, but it’s mostly guesswork because there’s less differences between the individual characters. Memorizing frames is less important than simply guessing which way they’re going to hit you.
That’s not to say that Tekken isn’t deep, because it does have some depth underneath it’s shell. I just didn’t appreciate it’s methodology. Throws are fairly difficult to guess but this is where memorization comes in to play. I was able to grasp the concepts here fairly quickly and toss opponents around once I was able to guess when they would block. Still, I feel like I mastered Tekken much faster and easier than a lot of other fighting games of this era. I never felt like the characters were different enough from one another though. Sure, speed has some significance but it feels less so here. That’s because strikes are more clunky in general. The animations take too long and the freeze frames are too long. It makes these bouts take too long, and I found myself getting a little bored on occasion because of it.
Tekken is not a very pretty game. I’m willing to be a little lenient because it’s an early PS1 title, but even the art style is hideous. Even compared to it’s contemporaries Tekken is ugly, and kind of unsettling to be honest. The character models in combat animate well enough, but they take too long to perform each action. Faces are also really not drawn well. It’s bad. Honestly Namco should have just kept some of these features out because even when compared to other titles from this time it looks bad. I’m happy to report though that the framerate remains very steady, and quite high at that. Tekken runs smoothly and I imagine this was the major selling point. The soundtrack is very scant. There’s not a lot of music here. What’s there is decent but by and large you’ll soon forget the entirety of audio in this game.
