Behind The Scenes: Tekken

LP, RP, LP, LP, RP, RK, RK, RK, LP, LK. Some 15 years on, King’s ten-hit remains burned into our brains where it will presumably stay for all time. Even though we’ve played an unfathomable number of fighters since Tekken burst onto the scene in 1994 and arriving on PlayStation a year later, we still vividly recall the reward of committing one of these strings to memory and using it to bust the faces of novices. As our unconventional introduction shows, we have the scars to prove it, and everything.

However, due to our passion for self-improvement, Tekken simply isn’t one of the many classic games that can still claim to be relevant today. But just because Namco has gradually improved upon every single element of the original to the point where it’s effectively redundant, does this mean that one of the keystones in the 3D fighting genre can just be forgotten? Of course not. While Tekken may have trailed Sega’s pioneering work in the genre with the forgotten Dark Edge and, soon after, Virtua Fighter, Namco can very much take credit for its part in PlayStation’s success and the rebirth of a genre. With the spectacularly popular series approaching its seventh incarnation, we spoke with director Katsuhiro Harada about his role in the birth and evolution of one of gaming’s most revered franchises.

“At the time, Namco was developing a 2D fighting game called Knuckleheads but the company was really focusing on 3D technology,” explains Harada. “So we thought about making a 3D fighting game so we could learn more about developing 3D character models. That’s how we started.” Namco took a rather different route from Sega in its character design, utilising rounded edges (well, as close to rounded as the technology of the time would allow) and Gouraud shading in a bid to make fighters appear more realistic than Virtua Fighter’s combatants and their razor-sharp edges. And while it would be some time before a beat-’em-up embraced full movement in three-dimensional space, Tekken was certainly a pioneer in this field. Moves like Yoshimitsu’s spinning combos allowed slight Z-axis movement to drive home the fact that polygons were more than just a presentation tool; they would go on to change the genre entirely.

At the time, though, we’re not sure the world would have been ready for the kind of freedom offered by the most recent Virtua Fighters and Soul Caliburs – it was mind-blowing enough to just see fights play out in three dimensions and this is a strength Namco played with the view-change feature. Cribbed from the popular racers of the time, this option allowed you to cycle through several different view options, all of which showed off the extra dimension Tekken had over its years’ worth of competitors. Slightly impractical perhaps, but it was the perfect tool to emphasise the wow factor of the then-stunning 3D visuals and as such can only be lauded as an ingenious inclusion.

So, how much influence did other fighters at the time have on Tekken’s origin story? Harada tells us of the importance of Virtua Fighter on the project. “Of course we studied the game a lot. It was quite influential,” he reveals, although the kings of the 2D world apparently didn’t nearly have so much of an impact. “Street Fighter wasn’t really part of the decision – it’s just the direction we chose. However, holding back to guard was something Street Fighter and other 2D fighting games had used, and it seemed like a natural way to do it so we adopted that element.” This was one crucial difference between Namco’s brawler and Virtua Fighter, which featured a dedicated button for guarding, as well as a single punch and kick button. In Tekken, fight fans already had something far more familiar and natural, closer to the multi-button setups of so many classic 2D fighters yet with its own unique twist.

Rather than the existing standard of having a series of punches and kicks that ranged from light to heavy, Namco took the brave step of assigning a button to each limb. “The left-right punch combination felt really good with this setup,” says Harada. “That influenced our decision to have a button for each limb.”

Follow our for all the latest videogames news, reviews, previews, interviews and features, while our fan page is the best place to communicate with other fans of games™ magazine.