#695 Tekken 3 (PS1) Exclusive Hidden Characters (2/3): Gon playthrough.

Channel:

AdmiralMcFish - Bosses and Hidden Characters

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9,060

Published on August 27, 2017 12:56:54 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La5KlpPSqv0

Game:

Tekken 3 (1996)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 7:55

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A playthrough of the exclusive hidden/guest character Gon in the PS1 port of Namco's Tekken 3.

I didn't do one of my big, gushing description ramblings on the last video, so let's change that this time.

The PS1 port of Tekken 3 is phenomenal, being one of the best selling and not only highest rated games on the system, but of all time, reaching scores into the high 90s% in gaming magazines back in the day. Tekken 3 was the second proper fighting game I owned, after Soul Blade, and I received it for a birthday back in the day. I cannot even fathom how many hours I spent on this game back in the day, it would be difficult to even calculate it. A stellar cast, a consistently weird yet wonderful soundtrack and a whole plethora of curious secrets and additions to the arcade game which we just took for granted back in the day.

In hindsight, Tekken 3 is complete oddity, and it's very easy to see that this was the first game Harada had his hands on. With the arcade roster being a little lacking, what did they decide to do? Well, a few good ideas, and a few bad ideas. In terms of good ideas, they made Anna a true character, and while making most hidden characters easy to unlock they decided to hide one character behind a intriguing, if not always fun, side-scrolling beat-em-up mini-game.

The other idea was to hide a guest character in the game behind a brand new mini-game, the rather beloved Tekken Ball mode. Tekken Ball started out as a mini-game in order to help you learn juggling combos, similar to how Street Fighter 3 had mini-games and bonus combos in order to learn parrying. They couldn't make it work however, so instead decided to turn it into a sort of party game, where you attack a floating ball beach to either make it hit the opponent for damage, or land on the opponent's side and make them take damage as a result. The first opponent when you selected this mode, however, would be a brand new character; a small dinosaur named Gon. Defeating him would allow you to unlock him (although you could also unlock him by getting a high-score in Survival mode and putting your initials in as GON).

Gon is actually the first and only guest character in the series, a terrible gimmick which Namco would later drag their other series, SoulCalibur, down with. I hate this character. He's awful. They could have bothered to put a real character in the game, but instead opted for some character from a manga no one's ever read or even really heard about. Gon cannot be hit by most high-attacks (a dumb gimmick we'll also see with Yoda in SoulCalibur IV, which is why I brought up the guest character aspect to it), and his moves are a mixture of dumb-looking attacks, ranging from punching with those short arms of his to farting on the enemy. I didn't mind but didn't really care for him back in the day, but in hindsight I actually kinda despise the little bugger. The main reason for this however is that, due to licensing issues, he is the reason why Tekken 3 isn't on the European PSN store. Yeah. Guest characters were a fucking mistake. Gon is too different from the other characters to really work in the game's setting, which is such a poor choice as Tekken 3 is so much more fluid and refined as a title than its predecessors were. We'll see plenty more bizarre choices though, that's for sure.

Next time, we take a look at an intriguing secret character with a surprising amount of hidden potential. As for me, while on the subject of guest characters I think I'll go record my Spawn playthrough, to remind me of when even a goofy choice could still work out pretty well.

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