365//365: Day 151 – Tekken Advance (GBA)

The Game Boy Advance was a handheld system with some remarkable games, in terms of technological advancements. In a rough estimate, the GBA was the near equivalent of the Super Nintendo in terms of visuals and internal power. If you take a look at Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Super Mario Advance 4 and even Final Fight One, they are just about matching the quality and quantity of the Super Nintendo. However to our surprise, this little handheld that could, produced some titles that were a bit beyond the scope of the highest quality Super Nintendo releases. Some were good (Street Fighter Alpha 3, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival) and some had promise, but ultimately fell flat (Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride). Can you believe Namco developed a Tekken title on the GBA? Would you believe it — Tekken Advance is pretty solid, compromises notwithstanding.

Even though the move-set is condensed into one punch and one kick, Paul still manages to be overpowered.

Leaving the obvious changes for later, the one big change to this installment has to do with the removal of a punch and kick button, reducing the number of attack buttons in your arsenal to two. Your shoulder buttons represent Tagging and Throws respectively. While the combat can feel a bit dumbed down, there’s a semblance of the classic Tekken gameplay still intact, though a bit skewed. Cheap powerhouses like Paul are not overly affected, as most of his overpowered tactics have carried over, with little sacrifice. Surprisingly, across the board the controls are not as restricted as you’d think they’d become. While a lot of multi-button combos are condensed into half the number of attack buttons, there’s a surprising amount of faithfulness to the series, and oddly captivating as well. Your signature ten hit combos are still here, though it seems like you can start them up with the first three hits and then mash the buttons to finish them off, with little in the way of timing each blow. As a whole, it sure as heck won’t oust your console incarnations of Tekken, nor your PSP version, but the gameplay is definitely a lot tighter than you’d expect.

With the size of the media as small as it is, Namco had to cut a lot of corners, not just on the control front. The cast of characters is a paltry nine, with Heihachi being the tenth character that is unlocked. Granted the detail and animation to these characters are quite astounding, it’s a bit disappointing to not have more variety. At least you have a few different ways to playing the game. There’s the universal Arcade Mode, as well as Survival Mode (one life bar, constantly fighting enemies), a Versus Mode for you and a friend, Practice, and two surprisingly engaging modes in Tag Battle and Versus Tag Battle. What makes it surprising is not just the fact that you’ll be able to tag a partner in and out, but the fact that you’ll be playing in a three person team, competing in a six man tag team match. Tag Battle is actually a lot more fun than the regular Arcade Mode, as you’ll be able to switch between characters without having to lose and continue from there. For a game that had to cut a lot of corners to make it plausible enough to work on the GBA, Namco really pushed the envelope hard where the were able to.

Tag Battle -- A shocking amount of entertainment, although you can't juggle tag.

Graphically though, is another story. While the character models look and animate eminently well, the backgrounds suffer. While you have the sidesteps featured in other Tekken titles, which gives you more freedom to where you move, the ground looks extremely repetitive, while the background is static. It’s almost as if there’s a blue screen in the background of each stage, displaying a random scenery piece to fit to the color of the ground beneath our feet. You definitely cannot fault Namco here, as they’ve basically tried to shoe-horn in a ton of visual variety and detail into a 50lb frame. Having the characters look as well as they do, with a fluid enough animation to them, more than makes up for any background shortcomings.

Tekken Advance’s audio also has stunning amount of faithfulness to its console brethren. There’s a good amount of vocal quips in total, with a high amount of quality to them. The only problem here is that each fighter is not given a diverse enough set of vocal bits, leading to the same limited grunts and shouts repeated more than they are on the console iterations. Again, it’s hard to fault Namco on this, and it’s commendable that they did as much as they did. Unfortunately, the music doesn’t sound as strong, with a dull pacing and conversion to it, you really don’t feel any extra adrenaline rushes from it.

One casualty of being ported onto a media with limited memory -- there are no endings. Then again, take a look at those impressive endings in Tekken 6 on the vastly more powerful PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

While there’s a lot of content removed in order to fit this franchise into a GBA cartridge, Tekken Advance manages to not only push the GBA in ways its never been pushed before, but deliver an experience that’s nearly as brilliant as its console counterparts. The character models and animations are surprisingly fleshed out, the core gameplay is still addictive and the Tag Battle mode is an appreciated bonus that actually helps balances he experience towards the gamers favor. If you can find it cheap enough, it’s recommended that you give this a go. Even with a limited roster, Tekken Advance still manages to captivate you to the point where you’re enjoying the experience almost as much as the earlier titles.

Rating: 7.7