Tekken's One Button Per Limb Fighting System


Why I didn't immediately warm up to Tekken as my favorite fighting game was because of the "odd" scheme of having the four primary buttons assigned to each limb of the body. Four attack buttons were set namely the use of Left Punch, Right Punch, Left Kick and Right Kick. At first, I thought that it would make the game lack depth but each fighter had their own fighting styles used which didn't make every one button per limb concept to be just overly accessible like Mortal Kombat had with focusing high and low attacks.

The beauty of Tekken's fighting system was this - it combined both character uniqueness and accessibility. Having one button per limb said, "Oh it's accessible." then it goes into the deeper gameplay. The whole learning process of Tekken might best be called as an "instinctive learning process" since you control your characters like a puppet while they all have their unique fighting styles. As the game progressed, the whole idea of each character having their own stances was progressed with Tekken 3 maximizing the potential of the first Playstation, Tekken 5 maximizing the potential of the Playstation 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 maximizing the potential of the Playstation 3.

The more I played Tekken's "odd" scheme, the more I thought that it actually made the game more accessible to starting players. While having one button assigned for a strength of an attack, the one button per limb system is more accessible for beginners while there's some character uniqueness to look forward to. It's accessible at first yet it actually goes deeper as Tekken has a lot of moves to master which in the end, you pick that one character (mine is Kazuya) who fits your fighting style while the others will give you a challenge to adjust to them. It's just like how Kazuya ended up fitting into my fighting style while I originally liked King, I later played Kazuya (and in extension Jin) in later Tekken games. Later on, Ed Boon's favoritism for Tekken caused him to not only bring Mortal Kombat to a different level of fighting but later, he incorporated this fighting scheme with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and continued it up to Mortal Kombat X.

So what's your thoughts on Tekken's one button per limb fighting system?

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