Tekken: A History

Kids may not know too much about arcades these days, but many of the games that we all play had their start on the coin operated video game machines. Tekken was released in 1994 when Street Fighter was the big game that everyone was playing. But unlike that title, the control and unique 3D like graphics really separated it from the competition. The buttons on the console were no longer for how hard one kicked or punched, but the player could now control each limb. Of course, this kept some players from liking Tekken, but those that did, found the strategy based battle sequences to be quite refreshing, rather than mashing buttons hoping for the best.


In 1995, Tekken was ported to the Playstation, which wasn’t that difficult since the arcade machine was basically a stripped down version of the console. This version was one of the PS’ most popular titles, which earned it a Guiness Book world record for the first to sell one million copies on a console game.

And of course, with every popular game, there was to be a sequel that was released a year later. Things were evolving very quickly in the video game world with better graphic capabilities with each revision and Tekken 2 took advantage of that, looking as good as ever. Going up against Mortal Kombat, Tekken 2 had a lot of competition for player attention and coins in the arcade version. Its secret was to stay real and not get crazy like MK did with moves that weren’t possible in the real world. T2 remained true to the martial arts world and people appreciated that.

By the time Tekken 3 came along, the series had already been very popular, and Namco took a big risk in changing things around, but in this case it was for the better. 3D was getting very good at this point and the characters became much more realistic in both their moves and their ability to move about this 3D environment. While still basically a 2D game, T3 added the ability to sidestep in the arena, adding a new element to the game. Some were so impressed with the game quality, that they consider it the best version of the series.

Tekken 4 was the first of the series to be ported to the Playstation 2, giving it another added boost in graphics. Now the women could be seen as women with the proper curves and cleavage as they made their moves, much to the delight of fanboys everywhere. With 3D games becoming popular with 3rd party shooters and other things, Namco wanted to get in on that, and so they introduced a very complex area for fighting. Not only could the players go forward and backward with very little sidestep in T3, they could now go around objects and find shelter behind them. The unlevel ground made this even more challenging. This didn’t sit well with many of the legacy players who felt that this allowed too much in the way of evasion techniques that could be used for what they saw as cheating. The critiques of this version were many and it is considered by most Tekken fans to be the worst of the series.


Namco, hearing all the complaints, decided that in Tekken 5 they would offer some of both the limited arenas and the unlevel 3D ones. This would hopefully make everyone happy and it did for the most part. T5 did quite well and introduced several new characters, all while once again upping the graphics in what was probably the best and most realistic of the series. It also introduced the concept of money being earned for fights, rather than just the main prize. This can be used to customize one’s character with new clothes, etc.

Tekken 6, having found success with T5, followed on that same order without much experimentation on the part of Namco. Instead they focused more on adding to the flexibility of the hits and damage points. In Rage mode, the player gets more damage when nearing the end of their vitality bar, while Bound hits keep a player locked in one place so that combos can be performed. What was interesting in T6 was the ability to fall through a detonating floor into another fighting area.


Technically, Tekken Tag Tournament 1 and 2 were not really part of the series, but appeared as extended games at their respective times. The former was based on the T3 game engine and provided for the player to take control of one of two fighters that would then tag to the other one when it was appropriate. It did bring back some popular characters from T2. TTT2 was released after T6 and used that graphic and game engine, but instead of only playing one character in your tag team, it opened up the possibility for dual attacks using both characters against the foe.

The series goes on. In May 2010, planning is in place for Tekken 7 and a new movie is in post-production based on the story in the video games. We think it’s quite cool for a game that started out as being on the arcade that few probably even remember now.