bleemcast! Tekken 3

"It almost does what it's meant to"

...which is to say, very little. I am not going to review tekken 3 - hop over the PS side for that. This is simply a review of the bleem! itself.

About bleem!...it allows you to play certain PlayStation games on your Dreamcast. Beside Tekken 3, there are Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo 2. It works as such - insert the bleem! disc into the Dreamcast and turn it on. Then wait for awhile, and a title screen appears. From here, you can access help menus, or you can just run the game, by simply removing the disc, inserting Tekken 3, and pressing start when prompted.

Pretty much all aspects of the original Tekken 3 are intact. The only one that is missing is the secret in Theatre mode, where you can view the movies of Tekkens 1&2 by inserting them into the Dreamcast (the Dreamcast automatically soft-resets upon opening the lid).
Having said that, however, much of the game is lacking in other areas. For example, the music often skips, making it quite distracting. Some of the voice samples are actually distorted. Another thing - the bleem! advertises better graphics than the PS version. Although the lines are slightly cleaner and the color is crisper, the models are not at all improved upon. The backgrounds get blurry extremely often, and the characters blur regularly enough to make it an annoyance.

All this can be dealt with, though. The main problem comes in the gameplay itself. Tekken didn't use the PS shoulder buttons. Rather, the game used a simple 4-button layout, matching the stock Dreamcast pad perfectly. But, although the buttons are easily pressed, they are not responsive, nor accurate. Well, at least not as much as the PS version. And multiple button presses are even more unresponsive; to pull off a 10-hit string is possible, but requires much more timing and speed than in the PS version. Sidesteps, one of the greatest, easiest features of the game, are now made much more difficult. Sidesteps are meant to be quick, to dodge attacks. However, because of the inaccurate control, I either crouched/jumped, or the sidestep came slightly late (mostly the former).

Then, there's saving your progress. First off, the VMU has to be formatted to match a PS memory card. You know what that means. It can ONLY SAVE PS games. You can only save your bleem! Tekken 3, GT2, and MGS game saves on this VMU. If you've got some cash to spare that's not the problem. Here's where it really gets annoying - there are two game save glitches. One, sometimes when you choose to save the game, it won't save, and you'll have to do it again. Minor nuisance. But, sometimes your VMU will merely stop loading. As in, it gets corrupted. This happens much more regularly than in any other game (yes, even more than Phantasy Star Online). This is the biggie. There are a few others as well, such as an autoload that occasionally doesn't work, and an autosave that never works.

Really, the only reason you should get this is if you are a fan of Tekken 3, yet you don't want to buy a PlayStation and are willing to sacrifice lots. If not, only get this if it is really cheap, or, even better, get some Dreamcast fighting games. There are slews of good ones - Soul Calibur, Power Stone 2, Street Fighter III and Alpha 3, Dead or Alive 2, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Last Blade 2, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, King of Fighters Dream Match and Evolution, etc. For the real deal, just dish out a few quarters at the arcade. You'll be happier.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/15/02, Updated 04/15/02