It's no secret that my favorite Tekken game is Tekken Tag Tournament 2. I wasn't such a fan of the first game with some issues such as the rather sluggish side stepping (one reason why I still spit at Mortal Kombat 4 also) and the character endings are anything to be desired. However, these are but minor shortcomings since Tekken Tag Tournament should be viewed as an important experimental game that won several awards, was an important game for the sales of the Playstation 2 (which this game was probably the selling point like how Super Mario World was to the Super NES back then) and it was praised by longtime fans of the game.
The game in itself is NOT canon so don't try to fit it into the regular timeline. Instead, it was a spin off that returned some characters. Some fans weren't too happy with the loss of Kazuya and were probably more than happy to have him back - even in non-canon. The game featured over 35 characters to make some nostalgic games. Though, please take note that some identities have more than one person such as there are two Kumas (father and son), two Kings (the first king and the second one who appeared 20 years later after the second tournament), there have been different Jack Robots, and a second Armor King rose up to take the place of the one Craig Marduk killed out in a heat of passion.
The game in itself seems to have a bit of simplistic accessibility yet with some depth. The game introduces a tag team different from Marvel vs. Capcom series. Instead, you only need to defeat one opponent to win or lose one character to lose a round. I wasn't quite a fan of that mechanic since I preferred to beat up two characters instead of one. However, this one adds a more strategic depth which I think should've been used in Mortal Kombat (2011) in its tag team mode. The game also tries to encourage troll gamers by having "clone teams" such as Marshall Law and Forrest Law (who was probably not popular at all) or Kazuya and Jin (that's until Jin had his own fighting move onwards), and Michelle Chang and Julia Chang.
I think the addition of the non-canon Unknown is probably the answer to Virtua Fighter's Dural. Unlike Dural, she has no official storyline of her own for the actual canon. Instead, she was that female fighting boss that copied moves from the others. The purely non-canon character still had a charm in adding her as a challenging yet not so-overpowered final boss. Strangely enough, she was also the only character with the full FMV ending.
Eventually, the game in itself would see a revival 12 years later in Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Namco finally decided to revisit the first non-canon spin-off and add nearly every character from the first to the sixth game. The sequel managed to learn from the first and improve it. For me, this is still a game I'd want to replay all over again.
Comments
Post a Comment