Tekken 3

"Recycled material, but still a good game."

When I first played Tekken 3, I was pretty happy with it. After all, I’m a fan of the Tekken series, and I liked the awesome graphics and fast paced gameplay the Tekken 3 had. But, I just had one small problem: I’ve seen it all already, and I wasn’t really seeing anything new, with the exception of characters. It was all repeated and recycled mechanics from previous Tekken games, and no real new features... but being a fan of the series, I wasn’t all that disappointed at all, because I really like the old system of battling. I was just simply a little bit let down when I saw that it was the same.

Hoo-Hah!

If you’ve played past Tekken games, the battle engine in this third installment will undoubtedly look familiar. The gameplay seems to have sped up just a bit from Tekken 2, meaning that the animation and whatnot will be paced a tad faster. Other than this speed-up, the gameplay is virtually identical from past games, but this is really not such a bad thing unless you are absolutely sick and tired of it, and are striving for a new battle engine. I happened to enjoy the old engine very much, and to me, the series just never gets old. If you have yet to find out how the game even plays, it’s very simple. You simple take your pick of a character from a given selection, and you have to fight against your opponent until one of you drains all the life out of your opponent. This is simply done by using attacks such as punching and kicking, and each maneuver takes a given amount of health away. Of course, people can use combos to make a chain of maneuvers with no interruptions from your opponent, which I’m sure you’ve heard of because it is extremely common in fighting games. In fact, I’m sure you’ve heard of this whole system, because it’s quite typical.

Who can you play as?

There’s a nice character selection, but it’s a bit on the small side. This game is where Hwoarang, the coolest Tekken character, makes his debut, so of course that just boosts everything up. :) Other favorite faces are also seen, such as Forest Law. My complaint in this area is the lack of numbers, because there is not a horribly large selection like there was in Tekken Tag Tournament. I honestly think that they could’ve added much more characters, but instead they left many people, such as myself, a bit disappointed.

Is it puuurty?

Graphically, the game is amazing. The environments were nice and colorful, the character models were beautifully designed, and everything has a lot of detail in every corner. They are quite up to par with even its “sequel”, Tekken Tag Tournament, but Tekken 3 doesn’t have FMVs before and after the game to look at. Nevertheless, they looked quite similar, and that got me to thinking that maybe Namco couldn’t make them much better in TTT, because Tekken 3’s graphics were so good. They could’ve, but Namco would have to waste three fourths of the machine’s power on FMVs. Overall, the graphics were excellent, and are still easily some of the best graphics on an arcade machine today.

The animation looked perfect. Everything moved smoothly, and there was no noticeable slowdown in any part of the game. One commendable feature was that blood was actually spewed from the part of the body that was hit, rather than from one default part of the body. In many fighting games I have played in the past, the blood animation is very poor, because it may not spew from the correct part of the body... for instance, you may do a low punch to the stomach, but the blood comes out of the attacked character’s head. People do not seem to notice this, but it actually happens quite often, and this was thankfully not the case in Tekken 3. Great animation, overall.

It doesn’t sound like fingernails on a chalkboard, does it?

No, the sound was done quite nicely. Each character had his or her own unique voice, which is heard when they cry from pain or yell while using an attack of some sort. For instance, Law has a very high pitched scream that he uses when doing some kind of attack, and it also sounds strikingly similar to Mortal Kombat’s star, Lui Kang. As for music, I believe there is a soft beat going on in the background during gameplay, but I could not hear it too well due to the loudness of my arcade. However, I could make out a beat, and it sounded pretty good and blended in well with the somewhat exotic looking, colorful backgrounds. Overall, the sound was done very nicely, and I don’t have any complaints with the exception of the Law/Lui Kang yell.

Final Word
Although Tekken Tag Tournament topped it, Tekken 3 is a pretty good game that boasts beautiful graphics, good sounds, and an old yet still fun gameplay system. If you’ve got Tekken 3 somewhere in your local arcade, I would suggest that you walk over to it, punch out anyone that’s playing it, put in your quarters, and at least try it out. I was a bit disappointed, you might also be slightly disappointed, but nevertheless it’s a good game, so go play it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/01, Updated 08/09/01