Tekken

"A decent game, but newer versions overshadow it greatly, and certain amounts of slacking are obvious."

Most of you probably know of the Tekken series one way or another, perhaps you've heard bad things about it from fans of other fighting games, perhaps you've played the newer ones, maybe you've played as Yoshimitsu in SC, or Heihachi in SCII, or perhaps you've even played this one, the original.

Tekken is a long running series of fighting games, all based around the Iron Fist Tournament, a tournament where fighters get to show off their skills and attempt to defeat Heihachi, the leader of the Mishima Zaibatsu, for a prize of Money and the Mishima Zaibatsu itself.

I'm not going to go into much detail on the fighting system as I feel it is unneccessary as other reviews and FAQs probably will give you the information you need.

Story:6/10
Um, not much is told to you here, just pretty much that in the Iron Fist tournament there are 8 fighters left.... However, the story on each character is halfway decent, except for the secret characters, and you'll probably never understand how and why the hell these secret characters just appear like that, at least in this game.

Sound:6/10
As for the voices and yells of each characters, at first it seems relatively ok. That is, until you fight Heihachi and go "Hey, he has the same voice as Jack." Then you get Ganryu and P. Jack and notice that all 4 of them have the same exact voice. Lee and Kazuya have the same in-battle voices and yells as well. So do Nina and Anna. The list goes on. The music redeems the slack job on the voicing slightly, though, but it isn't really anything special.

Gameplay:8/10
It's easy for a beginner to walk up, learn a couple easy combos, and eventually get better and learn new, more difficult to use combos. In other words, both beginners and experts will have a good time with this game for the most part. Of course, some characters (too many) share some of the same combos and attacks as others. For example, Kuma, Ganryu, Jack, and P. Jack all have the same square button combo, and Armor King and King are barely different at all. One pair of characters: Kunimitsu and Yoshimitsu, have almost no differences at all in my experience. There ARE "pairs" of characters that are similar but still differ enough to be somewhat diverse, such as Lee and Law.

Overall:7/10
It's a good game, but simply overshadowed by its sequels and other recent fighting games. And the slacking on some characters makes it somewhat unappealing.

Rent or Buy? Buy. It shouldn't be too expensive anyway, and I don't even think you'll be able to rent it anyway.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/05