Tekken 3

"Namco is great again!"

Tekken 3 was obviously the best tournament fighting game around before Sega's white box we know as the Dreamcast came out last September. Some of you will argue for Street Fighter 2 and others for Super Smash Brothers, but that is not the point. My point is that now our wonderful Tekken series has some competition. The Dreamcast is the tournament fighting system so what should be the next logical step for Namco? (I'll state that more clearly in my list in case you did not quite figure out what I was getting at there.)

GRAPHICS--10
Even though this game came out some time ago, this game still has the best graphics on the PlayStation. Sure, Final Fantasy 8 has some nice cut scenes, but so does Tekken 3. There is no comparison. In some ways the characters look more realistic than in Soul Calibur. For instance, nearly all are human. That is about the only way, but they still do look pretty. The characters are not polyized at all (I made up that word. It means that you cannot see the polygons on the characters.) and they are only slightly grainy at times. The lighting is great especially in (I am going to butcher the spelling. Please do not whine.) Xinanou's arena. (Someone, when they are posting, tell me how to actually spell it and I will fix it. That will help out a lot.) I especially like the, um, celebrations after a character wins a match in the King of Iron Fist Tournament.

MUSIC--8
Music really is not an important part to tournament fighting games as it is to RPGs and not even close to as important it is in Samba de Amigo or PaRappa the Rappa. So...Tekken 3’s music is good, bringing out the best in most cases, and the worst in others. I never say a lot about music in most games, and unfortunately for you all, I do not think this review will be an exception. The music is very good, just nothing that will make you want to go out and import a soundtrack. Or go out and buy one if there is one in the United States of America, or whatever other country you are reading this in.

CONTROL--9
Nothing about this game is hard to control. The buttons you press are laid out perfectly. Exactly as they should for an easy win. Most games you have to fiddle with the Control Configuration option, but here you do not. All of the simple moves are simple to pull of and the opposite is true of the difficult moves. Some of you may have a problem with it, but I think that is how games should be. Easy to learn, difficult to master. Never has that rule applied so much to a video game.

FUN--10
This is where the game really shines. Sometimes, my neighbors and I will have Tekken tournaments. We always go through the one player game with a name we draw out of a hat and see who gets the lowest time. My lowest time, and the lowest time in the history of our contest, was something like 2 minutes 28 seconds when I drew Julia Chang. we have all played the game so much that mostly our times are under 5 minutes. But when a newcomer comes into our neighbor hood it takes much longer, sometimes 25 minutes. Why am I telling you all this? To explain how many different options you and your friends and create in Tekken to have fun. We have tournaments all of the time. We have ball mode tournaments. We even have some of the Final Fight type mode tournaments. I never can remember it’s name. Someone might as well tell me the name to that too. The game is still very fun if you are playing it alone or with only one other person. Then you can just duke it out against the computer or your friend, obviously.

CLOSING STATEMENT
Tekken 3 is the only tournament fighter worth playing on the PlayStation.

OVERALL--10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/28/00, Updated 07/18/01