Tekken

I am not a fighting game guy. Fighting games have always been hard for me to grasp and have fun with whether I'm fighting the CPU or other humans. But, for whatever reason, I got totally sucked into the Tekken series and that lasted all the way up to Tekken 5. I would play them excessively for reasons I still do not fully understand. Tekken 1 is the game that ultimately convinced me that we needed a PlayStation in the house and caused me to pester my father until he relented that first Christmas the PS1 was out and this was one of two games we got. I would convince everyone around me that we really should play some Tekken and I usually had the home advantage because of the hours of play I would put into it in my spare time. Those were great times. Unfortunately for Tekken though, time wasn't kind to it.

For 1995 (1994 in Arcades), The graphics and polygonal characters were good. The backgrounds were all varied, albeit static images. The ground textures were passable, but they're not great nowadays. The characters are all unique looking and have personality. The FMV at the intro and endings were awesome at the time. The King ending with the real kids superimposed in the FMV looks weird and awesome now and looked weird and awesome then. The only complaint I have with FMVs are none of them have sound effects, just music layered on top of it. In the instance of an ending FMV, it's the same song over every video. The one instance where there's an extra sound effect would be in Law's ending where his students are making the "Ha-Yah!" noises practicing Kung-Fu students make.

Speaking of music, The soundtrack to this game is well done and is still burned into my memory even after 22 years. Every stage has its own theme and they're all great. My particular favorites are King George's Island, Szechwan, and Fiji, but they're all good in their own right. The fighting sound effects that all of the characters make were the same ones used until all the way to Tekken 6 where they finally changed them. Good or bad, that made them instantly recognizable when you played any other game in the series so it ended up invoking nostalgia without you realizing it and made the game better for it. It made the new games feel familiar without feeling old and that all stems from this game. To be fair, that may just be me.

Perhaps the one part of this game that aged the worst is the actual fighting part. I don't know what it was about early PSX fighting games, but for whatever reason, they just didn't feel super responsive. The game will sometimes eat inputs and you're left just doing a standing straight instead of doing that Dragon Uppercut with Kazuya, leaving you open for your opponent to take advantage. This game compared to the games later in the series also had moves that were a little more complicated that they then simplified later in the series. For example, Paul's Hammer Fist + Power Punch is D+Square, F+Triangle. In later games, they simplified it to just press triangle to finish it off. All characters have some little difference like that that's hard to get used to if you're going back that sounds like a small thing, but not if you're used to the newer games. Your time on the ground also feels like it lasts forever. There is no quick stand up and you're totally vulnerable while laying on the ground for 2 /12 seconds. That's plenty of time to get while totally defenseless. That can be endlessly frustrating when in a hard fight.

While it's fun to go back and check out this game for historical reasons, I don't know if it should be your go to Traditional Tekken of choice. If you want that, Tekken 2 is better for that. The music is the best part of this game and you would be better served to put on the Tekken Playlist on YouTube to check out the game's sweet tracks. The FMV endings are fun to watch, but again, there's YouTube to check them out or if you're a fighting game fan, Tekken 7 is really good and comes with all of the endings of the previous Tekken games, including this one. The graphics are fairly average and the fighting is a little clunky so going back for those two things probably isn't worth it. Overall, I give this game a 3 out of 5. I still like this game and it's by no means bad and was great when it came out; it just didn't stand the test of time.