365//365: Day 363 – Tekken 3 (PSX) [PP]

"The true King of the Iron Fist Tournament."

As one of the only arcade series that manages to be consistently better on their home console debuts, the Tekken franchise has always been a technical, vastly gratifying series of fighting games. Tekken 3 on the PlayStation can be considered one of the most refined in the series, from top to bottom. With a strong variety of characters, both default and unlockable, Tekken 3 offered players a robust line up that would likely suit everyone’s needs in some form or another. Unlike games such as Street Fighter 2, Tekken’s reliance was upon an extensive list of moves, combinations, juggle strings and such, making the experience a complex one. There are a couple of problems with the whole set up, as a button masher playing Eddy Gordo for instance, can forgo skill and rely on luck to win a healthy amount of matches. Then there are characters like Paul Phoenix, who can punish people with a couple of moves being spammed out. Higher caliber tournament play does not suffer from these anomalies, but casuals can suffer from this annoyance. Thankfully that’s about the only kick in the junk that Tekken 3 provides, as the audio and video, although not completely perfect, are some of the best on the system for the fighting genre. Finally, the unlockables will keep players locked in for a good while, trying to unveil every character, as well as some of the more oddball features, such as Tekken Ball (which utilizes a ball in each battle). Namco did save the best for last with Tekken 3 on the original PlayStation system, and is still one of the premiere fighting games out there.

While the backgrounds are not immaculate representations of the arcade version, just about everything else exceeds it.

Rating: 9.1