Tekken (PS1) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 107
Devil genes, revenge, and a fighting tournament hosted by an evil multinational conglomerate... it's Tekken!
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, retrogaming fan, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EVERY game in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey. So let's play those classic retro games we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Tekken
Released 1994
Developer(s) Namco
Platform(s) Arcade, PlayStation
Genre(s) Fighting
Jay's Thoughts
Tekken is one of the big fighting franchises that emerged as the trend towards 3D gameplay was beginning to take off. At some level you could look at Tekken as just a copycat of Virtua Fighter, but Tekken featured a very interesting and unique gameplay mechanic. Namely, the game had a fighting "language" to its moves which allowed you to learn through observation... let me explain.
In Mortal Kombat if you witnessed an older kid do Sub-Zeros famous freeze ball move, you would immediately want to know how it was done. However, beyond begging for the secret, there was little you could do. Same was true in Virtua Fighter and Street Fighter and Killer Instinct and every other big franchise really. Witnessing moves doesn't help you learn how to play. However, in Tekken, by seeing an impressive move, you can actually deduce how to carry it out. This is done through Tekken's button system which has 4-buttons, left-punch, right-punch, left-kick, and right-kick. To do certain moves in the game you just have to press these buttons in different combinations. And so watching other characters in the game do their special moves, and paying attention to which limb moved in which order, can give you insight into how to carry out the moves! Pretty neat idea if you ask me!
Alright, beyond the technical aspects of Tekken, I think it's a decent fighting game, but having never grown up with Tekken and really gotten into it, it didn't really jump out to me as all THAT different from other fighting games. My go-to strategy in fighting games is basically to button mash and hope for the best. And it worked OK here in Tekken. Though it did lead to some frustrating losses.
All in all, I think this is a decent game, and I think fighting game fans should give this one a try for sure. For myself, I found it to be a fairly typical fighting game experience, and so personally I probably wouldn't really get into Tekken. But hey, that's just me.
➙ Must You Play It?
Tekken is a unique 3d fighting game that features a rather interesting "language" to its fighting move system. However, as I'm not a fighting game "guy", beyond the technical aspects to the fighting system, Tekken felt like a pretty standard 3D tournament fighter. It's a game that you may want to try out if it sounds like your kinda thing, but not a must-play for non-fighting game fans in my opinion.