Tekken playthrough (Playstation) (1CC)
53Playthrough with Kazuya. The version I'm playing is the version released on the European Playstation Network.
So, Tekken. You might have noticed the almost utter lack of Tekken on this channel. The reason for this is simple: I used to HATE Tekken. Growing up in the '90s, I didn't have a Playstation, I had a PC, which I got Virtua Fighter 2 for. But all my friends kept telling me VF sucked and Tekken was the best. So my Tekken resentment set in pretty early.
I didn't ever play a Tekken game until I got Tekken 5 for the PS2 much later. And after playing it for a bit, I concluded it was horrible. I'm going to sound like such a scrub for saying this, but here goes: in Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive, pressing the punch button repeatedly usually led to your character doing a combo. Not the case in Tekken. Therefore, I thought Tekken sucked and had bad controls. I found VF and DoA much easier to play and preferred the simpler controls.
Several more years later I picked up Tekken 1 and 2 from the PSN store when they were on sale, played them for a bit and again, came to the conclusion that they sucked. Horrible controls and far too hard. But in the past few months, I decided to try them again for the first time in years, and with the knowledge that I, a man who has one credited Art of Fighting 2, Mortal Kombat II and Virtua Fighter 2, must be able to conquer Tekken. And so I did.
Tekken was originally released in arcades in 1994, the PS port came out the following year. This port is great, featuring arcade perfect graphics (the graphics in the arcade version weren't great but shhhh), two soundtracks to choose from and the hidden bosses, who were unplayable in the arcade version, can be unlocked and played as here. It also features FMV endings for the non-unlockable characters, which have aged in a terribly good way, but at least they were there -something Virtua Fighter lacked (and still lacks!).
One thing that wasn't fixed is the ridiculously high difficulty level, which was a common fighting game trait in the mid '90s. You've got the annoying "start a combo but the CPU just ducks" strat, and then the ever classic "try to throw them, they duck, then throw you" tactic. Kazuya has a fairly good strat against the CPU: his rising sun move. This spin kick does two hits, and the CPU often won't block the second hit, so if you can get the timing down right you can beat any opponent with it. You can mix things up with the occasional throw as well.
Finally, we have to talk about Kazuya's ending, which is fairly imfamous. There is only one piece of ending theme music in Tekken 1, which sounds totally inappropriate for Kazuya's ending. Then there's the fact that it doesn't really look like he throwing his father off the cliff, more like there's some guy just out of shot who has an invisible wire connected to Heihachi, and yanks him out of Kazuya's arms. And then finally there's the smirk. :| :)