Retro Video Game of the Day: Tekken
- Mar 31, 2020
- 1 min read
Happy 20th Birthday, Tekken! The game was released for Sony PlayStation on 3/31/1995. The series has been universally acclaimed and commercially successful, having shipped more than 49 million units. Tekken is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, and the second best-selling fighting game franchise in history. The main series is widely credited by critics and video game publications for "raising the standards of fighting games" and has been praised for its gameplay mechanics and replay value. The first game in the series, Tekken, was released in 1994, first as an arcade game and as a port for the PlayStation in 1995. The game features eight playable characters, each with their own sub-boss, stage, and theme. The PlayStation version features remixes of the characters' themes, and also made the sub-bosses playable for a total of eighteen characters, including a costume swap for Kazuya (Devil Kazuya). In addition, a cutscene is unlocked when the player finishes arcade mode with each of the original eight characters. The canon ending of the game consists of Kazuya exacting revenge on his father Heihachi Mishima, beating him in the tournament and tossing him off the same cliff that he was thrown off by Heihachi.
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I still remember the weekend my older cousin handed me a gray PlayStation controller and said “just learn how to block.” I had no idea that Tekken would become the glue for so many late night gaming sessions in my living room, the kind where you yell at the screen and then rematch five times in a row. Reading about that 1995 release date really hits different when you actually wore out a controller playing as King. About halfway into my fighting game phase, I discovered Premium STL Files while looking for a way to print a little Kazuya figure for my desk, and somehow holding a physical version of that character made the electric wind god fists feel more…