Tekken Tag Tournament

"Lots of familiar faces team up for Tekken Tag Tournament!"

Well now, don’t we all love Tekken? The arcade hit has spread its popularity everywhere and I can see why quite easily... after all, it’s a nice, fun to play fighter. And the newest addition (although Tekken 4 will come out shortly at the time of this review), Tekken Tag Tournament, did not disappoint me at all when I first played it, on that one particular day to the arcade when I saw the Tekken Tag Tournament machine. It had very nicely done graphics, good sounds, and great gameplay all put together to make an awesome fighting game!

So, like, who’s in it?
Wow... there sure is a ton of characters to choose from. If I am not mistaken, they have taken every single character from past Tekken games and threw them all in here. You’ll be amazed when you enter the character selection screen, by the large number of different faces that have popped up on the screen. Yes, and this means they still have all the coolest faces around, like Eddy Gordo and Hwoarang, the two coolest Tekken characters created. While a handful of people dislike the fact that there are way too many familiar faces, I was personally not disappointed at all, and I was extremely pleased with the large character selection.

How’s the fighting system? And why is it called “Tag Tournament”?
If you’ve played previous Tekken games, you should know how the fighting works. It’s always been the simple, traditional fighting system — beat each other up until one of them loses all their health. Well, TTT is similar, but with a new twist added... the tag. On the machine, there are two punch buttons and two kicking buttons like there has always been, but this time you can see a button near them, with the word “Tag” nearby, and believe me, you’ve never seen this anywhere else. The function of tagging is to swap between the two characters that you have chosen... yes, you have to choose two different characters. You start the match right off with your first one, and at anytime you can switch with your other character. This can be used to your advantage, because when you are dealt with damage your blue life bar goes down, but some of that life bar is red on the end. When you switch out for a while and battle with your other character, the damaged one will be healed as far as the red bar goes. Not that the computer bots you are fighting against obviously use this as well. The way to win is to simply take out the life of just one character, and like always you must do this twice to win both rounds. Once you have finished this, you go on to the next pair, and the challenge slowly gets higher and higher. Overall, I think this is a very unique and fun innovation to the Tekken series, and is much more enjoyable than even the classic way of fighting featured in the older games.

Does it looks good?
That machine you’re playing is also a big piece of eye candy. When no one is playing the machine, you can stare at it for a little while before putting your quarters in, and you’ll see some amazing FMVs of the characters. When you start playing, the in game battle graphics are excellent as well. They are obviously up to par with all the new 128-bit console systems today, with their gorgeous detail and perfect animation. The backgrounds were very colorful and likely, and were beautifully detailed just like the characters were. The only problem that I could point out is that the blood seen looks very cheap looking, but then again this is a very common case in almost all fighting games. Otherwise, Tekken Tag Tournament simply had excellent graphics — nothing else to say about them.

Am I deaf, or is there no music?
Well, I personally never hear music when I play at my arcade, because if there is any music at all, it’s very soft when compared to the sound, and I also have a loud arcade. But as for sounds, I’ll say that they’re okay... just okay, nothing really special that you haven’t heard before, nothing too realistic and nothing too cheap sounding. I just particularly liked the way the machine said the character’s name when you made your character selection... I don’t know why, he just sounded so much cooler than any other announcer voice from a fighting game. :)

Is it fun?
Damn right it’s fun. I wasted a lot of quarters/tokens trying out all the different characters, learning their moves and combos, and just getting better at the game. And like almost every arcade fighter out there, your friend can put a quarter in the slot next to yours and you can have a match with him/her.

Final Word
Tekken Tag Tournament is a very fun arcade fighter, which in my opinion is better than any of the previous games in the series. If you’re a big fan of fighters and you know that this game is down at your local arcade, I suggest that you empty out your piggy bank and try this game out as soon as possible. You shouldn’t be disappointed, unless you don’t like the familiar faces or the new tag feature...

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/07/01, Updated 08/07/01