RobotGeek

It’s hard to measure what makes something cool.

When Tekken 3 came out on the PlayStation in 1998, it was met with universal acclaim. Of all the Tekken games, it was the best received during its time. From me, at around ten or eleven years old, it was met with obsession. Even though I absolutely sucked at the game—and still do—I was consumed by it and everything about it. Today, I still think it’s a really cool game. If being cool is about having a certain style and attitude, then Tekken 3 has that style in spades, and does so even twelve or thirteen years later.

The now for Tekken has been a long one. While there are a couple of Street Fighter cross-overs in the pipeline and a second Tag Tournament game just hit Japanese arcades, Tekken 6 remains the most recent instalment of the main series, though it has been around in one form or another since 2007. Tekken 6, when it finally came out on multiple consoles in 2009, was, for console-switching reasons, the first Tekken game I’d properly played and owned since the third. That’s about a decade’s worth of development for the franchise; three or four games. In that kind of timespan, we might expect a few changes. The question is, has Tekken kept its cool?

Hardcore players will probably tell you, rightly, that as far as the actual fighting goes, Tekken 6 is by far superior. In part, it’s a simple matter of technology and the refinement that comes with it—a difference of two console generations. On a graphical level, too, it’s an obvious few steps up. But while some may find it strange to try and argue for the superiority of a fighting game based on anything but the technicalities of fighting, I would argue that Tekken 3 is, as an overall package, the better game.

First, there are the fighters. At base, Tekken follows the same formula as every other fighting game: you get a roster of different characters, each with their own moves, and you pick one, learn their moves and fight against other characters, either controlled by the computer or other people. Each round of fighting ends when one fighter’s health bar runs out and they get K.O.’d. Tekken was initially notable for its adaptations of real fighting styles, realised in fluid animation, though with some obvious fantasy flourishes here and there.

Its roster is filled with characters of varying originality. More than a handful are based on well-known martial artists like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, or, more loosely, characters like Roy Batty from Blade Runner, or a Predator from those films, and other such pop culture entities. Derivative as some of them may be, however, Tekken has always been very good at realising character.

Each of these characters is carefully constructed in a way that simply but very effectively conveys a personality. Tekken 3, which I think was the best at doing this, demonstrates a million ways to encode personality without ever having the characters speak. First there are the fighting styles themselves, ranging from featherweight and slappy to slow and heavy; brutal and mechanical to extremely ornate; precise and bone-crunching to all about throwing one’s weight around.

In a very basic sense, personality can already be gauged here: some of these people are showy, some cold and clinical, some particularly aggressive. Each style has a different feel to it, partly derived from how those styles naturally are, and partly from the bearing a particular character brings to them (sometimes stereotypically). The two are inseparable.

These are taken as part of the person we actually see and hear on the screen, constructed through how the characters look and act. Outfits are a big part of it: in at least one option, Hwoarang the rebellious street-punk type has a kind of goggled biker thing going on; Lei Wulong dresses like a cop; Ling Xiaoyu wears a big pretty girly bow. They also each do a quick gesture or taunt as they step up to each other before a match starts—Paul Phoenix brings his fists together and rocks his head from side to side; Anna Williams acts all seductive while pretending to stretch, or something—and they have victory dances for when they win a match.

As well as their fighting style and stance, we hear them grunt and shout as they both execute moves and take hits. Bryan Fury, for instance, makes a chk-chk vocal noise not unlike a moving piston or a gun being loaded when he does a kind of double punch. Most of Nina Williams’ grunts are short, sharp and powerful; Heihachi’s are heavy and grizzled, like if an ancient wall had a voice; Yoshimitsu’s are pretty alien and weird.

Each character also inhabits a particular stage when you fight them, which is not true of most Tekken games, before or after Tekken 3. Different characters will show up in a temple or a laboratory, a theme park or a dojo, in the street or on a beach. Some of these stages are shared by different characters, but they’re all somehow appropriate to each of them. And finally, insofar as actual fights go, each character, in their particular setting, has a unique music track that plays. The Tekken 3 soundtrack is all much of a muchness in a way, but there are subtle differences that reflect these different personalities, in ways that aren’t always easy to describe.

The result is a roster full of vivid, distinctive fighters, with personalities you can feel through the controls as much as you can see with your eyes. In terms of playing style, you kind of have to assume these personalities when you play as these characters.

For competitive players, or when you’re just playing against your friends, the next layer of character development offered by these games tends to recede, and to an extent you can take it or leave it. Arguably, though, it does enhance our general experience. This is the wider narrative context of the tournament, with all the backstories and relationships and reasons for participation. The story is surprisingly involved, and it’s this that really brings the roster alive as an interesting, interrelated ensemble cast, rather than just a collection of people-shaped styles or flavours.

Sometimes when we get a game with ‘story on top’, it tends to get the roll-eye treatment because it can signify a game trying to lift itself above the game that it really is, adding meaning in a way that is forced and redundant. In a genre that is more blatantly about winning than most others, Tekken particularly opens itself up to this criticism. But while it’s probably not a candidate for any literary prizes, and fairly heavy on archetypes and simplistic characterisation, Tekken 3‘s story complements the game. Once I know Jin’s story, or Hwoarang’s, or even Kuma’s, to some degree that’s subsequently always there in my mind whenever I see them.

It doesn’t exactly give each fight the one-off life-changing aspect it should probably have for the characters (movie-minded me would expect something a lot more drawn out and melodramatic, and any such narrative tension is essentially removed by having all these fights over and over). But it does give the fighters themselves just a little more presence, because they become more relatable as actual people. It gives us more reason to be interested in them, more reason to pick favourites; it gives us a better ‘feel’ for them as characters—and importantly, all the biographical details are consistent with the personalities conveyed in-game. In the end, I don’t just play as slick, slippery wushu man. I play as Lei Wulong.

Backstory is delivered in a couple of ways. For the ten starting characters, brief biographies are provided in the manual, outlining motives, rivalries, relationships, and other trivia (you learn, for instance, that Ling Xioayu loves Peking duck and theme parks, which relates to her stage and music). In subsequent games, for all characters, this role is fulfilled by narrated text ‘prologues’ that precede each play of a story mode, though this is potentially more obnoxious to have to cycle through.

The other way story is conveyed is through cinematics. Again, for the starting ten, there is an awesome introductory FMV that gives you enticing snatches of each character. (Jin gets a bonus video featuring his parents, because Jin is the protagonist.) What you get of each character is very limited and usually needs explanation from elsewhere to make much sense (some of which you can’t even get from the game or the manual—there are a few things I only found out online), but it establishes something about them.

In the same vein, character-specific videos, for all of the characters, are obtainable upon completion of Arcade Mode, Tekken 3‘s designated story mode and the one that most resembles the actual tournament, pitching your selected character against eight randoms, followed by Heihachi, head of the Zaibatsu, and then Ogre, a supernatural entity. These videos are not always canon, as they show characters having won the tournament when they actually don’t—Jin does. But they generally still convey something about the character in question, and the fun of choosing any one of these characters is not diminished by Jin’s prominence in the story, as they all get breathing space.

Though FMVs were often a storytelling necessity in PSX-era games, given the limitations of game engines back then, their quality in comparison to in-game renderings often gave them the feel of rewards, usually for making a certain amount of in-game progress. Tekken 3 encourages you to play as each one of its characters by rewarding you with their videos. Character-oriented incentives fuel gameplay in other ways, too: starting with ten, new characters are unlocked by completing Arcade Mode using someone you haven’t used before. Theater Mode, where you can watch all the videos you’ve unlocked, as well as those from past games, requires completion of Arcade Mode by all ten starters. Tekken Ball Mode, a fun side-game, is acquired by doing the same with ten different characters of your choice.

In case you hadn’t got the idea yet, Tekken 3 is an exceptionally character-driven game. In Tekken 6, this still mostly holds true. All the essentials are there, and the roster size has doubled from around twenty to forty characters. As I mentioned at the start, it’s technically top-notch—animation is more fluid than ever, albeit at times a little light and floaty, and combat is meaty and satisfying. Playing Tekken 3 after playing Tekken 6, the older game can’t help but feel somewhat basic in comparison. But character-wise, the Tekken 6 experience doesn’t offer the same focus, and I think maybe suffers for it.

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