Behind The Scenes: Tekken

While potentially confusing in theory, it’s a wonderful mechanic in practice: if you see a character pull off a two-footed dive kick, you know immediately that its execution will involve both kick button and a direction, most likely forwards. This intuitive control scheme went on to make Tekken one of PlayStation’s flagship titles, a brand without which the console’s debut may not have fared as well as it did.

And what a coup for Sony it was to have Namco’s arcade expertise available exclusively on PlayStation – Tekken and Ridge Racer represented an early statement of intent for the Sony machine to become the home arcade, and these two titles were only the beginning.

Of course, the System 11 arcade board was based on PlayStation technology, so did this have something to do with Namco’s loyalty to the hot new console when it arrived on the scene? Harada confirms our suspicions. “The System 11 hardware was designed and developed with Sony. One aspect we struggled with was that we needed something faster and more stable than the CD drive that was on the PSX. We ended up going with a large capacity flash memory,” he recalls. “Our collaboration with Sony on the development of the arcade board, and the ease of porting it to the PlayStation led to it being exclusive. Also, it wasn’t possible to run Tekken on the Saturn with its 3D capabilities.” And what, if anything, were the key differences between the home and coin-op machines? “The CD drive was dropped for flash memory. It also has twice the memory of the PSX,” Harada tells us before explaining the problems faced in moving the fight from this more powerful cabinet into the living room. “We had a hard time with reading data quickly from a CD. We really had to think about the best methods of storing data, and the layout of the data on the disc.”

But just as the thrill of simply being able to play games saw generations sitting through weeks if not months of cumulative tape and disc loading, Tekken’s fairly modest load times weren’t going to put anyone off playing a fully featured arcade game in their homes. And while the first game sold fairly well off the back of being one of the first and most impressive beat-’em-ups to grace the PlayStation, its sequels really turned the ambitious fighter into a world-leading series. The first game really shows its age today, but both Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 remain immensely playable – a testament to the fact that both games were years ahead of their time in terms of quality. “We hoped it would be popular. However, the results were quite disappointing at first,” Harada reveals. “The series only began to be popular with Tekken 3 – it took over ten years to reach the point we’re at now where the game is number one in the genre, selling over 34 million copies.”

Part of the draw of the franchise is its interesting array of characters, the roster expanding with each new title and currently including over 50 characters past and present. Even the eight original fighters showcase a wonderful diversity – from the clunky robotic Jack and the strangely familiar martial artist Marshall Law to native American descendant Michelle Chang and jaguar-masked wrestler King, the roster manages to pretty much cover all bases even before the original sub-bosses (most of which are effectively palette swaps or combinations of existing characters) come into play. “Well, we didn’t really use anyone in particular as a base,” Harada attempts to convince us, but we’ve had enough virtual fights in our time to know that Lei versus Law is Jackie Chan versus Bruce Lee. “We did use a variety of sources for inspiration. We really focused on making the characters resemble the old style of Japanese comics: very defined and unique,” he semi-concedes. “But if you look at the designs, you can see a lot of differences. We’ve never had any legal issues.”

A great deal has changed since Tekken first punched its way on to the scene – the endless plains in which fights once took place have been replaced with fully destructible surroundings, which confine and dictate the pace of each fight, full three-dimensional movement allows blows to be deftly sidestepped and countered and characters today are infinitely more complex than they were first time round. King is the perfect example, lately seen sporting a rather confusing 22-strong branching selection of chain throws, when in the first game he didn’t even have 22 moves in total. Recoveries and escapes thankfully join the fray too, bringing Tekken in line with today’s more technical fighters. It has evolved to have more of an emphasis on juggles than most brawlers, finally establishing the unique niche within the genre that Namco started chiselling out 15 years ago.

And impressive as Tekken was back in its day, modern audiences are far more demanding. As the series progressed, Namco revolutionised what an arcade port should be, backing up arcade-perfect conversions of its best titles with stacks of bonus content that has made every Tekken title surprising in its own way. Tekken Ball, Tekken Bowling, Tekken Force and now character customisation – the developer constantly goes above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the player gets all the arcade greatness they bought into… and then some. With an Arcade History mode that features the original coin-op versions of the first three games, PlayStation 2 finale Tekken 5 is the perfect way to discover, first hand, just how the series has evolved with each new release. It’s a journey we embarked on only recently in preparation for Tekken 6 and one we can’t recommend highly enough, even if the frustrating, quarter-munching nature of the original’s artificial intelligence nearly reduced us to tears on several occasions. Still, we remembered King’s ten-hit. Go us.

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