[Throughout this project, I will be handing over this space for to the viewpoints of others for guest posts. For this one I am welcoming first time writer CreakyGamer]
1995 saw the release of Toy Story, the crash of Barings Bank and eBay launching its online realisation that one mans rubbish is another’s treasure. Not one of these events came close to staying in mind until I googled them for the sake of this post. The one thing that stands out is unwrapping the cellophane on my copy of Tekken on the PS1.
Until that point I’d enjoyed predominantly football and sport games but the home incarnation of the all conquering arcade game soon changed all that. Virtua Fighter was nice but Tekken, beautiful Tekken, a button per limb, a loosely defined story with a bad guy who looked like he could take a punch and certainly could dish out a beating, made Virtua Fighter seem, well, gamey.
Released to critical acclaim in November 1995, Tekken boasts an impressive CV of records. First PlayStation game to sell over 1 million units and more convincingly wins ‘The Best Selling Fighting Franchise’ in game history. It was also the first game that caused fights in our house about who would be Law and chain together the kicks to the face that felt so rewarding.
Throughout the series the plot focuses on the ‘King of the Iron Fist’ tournament but it didn’t start as a fighting game, it started as a project covering body mechanics. Sega had beaten Namco to the 3d fighter punch (pun intended) with Virtua Fighter and Namco, desperate to catch up, launched a program to compete. Katsuhiro Harada, having smashed sales records in his first year was put onto the Tekken project. Namco had the tech to produce a great game but melding it into a fighting game was a different story altogether. So they improvised… hiring Sega developers who had worked on the Virtua Fighter project they focused on the movement of the figures and creating a fluid mechanic which still forms the basis of the Tekken games.
Our primary character Kazuya Mishima starts the plot being thrown off a cliff by his father, Heihachi Mishima. Whilst you’d think that was enough, Kazuya’s fall activates the devil gene inside him to give him additional power. What follows is years of travelling the world fighting. Twenty one years later, Heihachi launches the King of Iron Fist Tournament to test his sons strength again. We all know who wins!
The mix of characters, from Law (clearly based on Bruce Lee) through the wrestler King (a nod to Japanese Manga wrestler Tiger Mask) and the cumbersome Jack gave players multiple styles to master and pulling off Jack’s full 5 swing is a thing of beauty and has cost me at least two close friendships.
Tekken remains a stalwart of fighting games with each incarnation being a standalone giant, but without the first edition doing so well, we’d still be playing Punch Out!.
