Tekken 3
Ultra CooL Game #6
Type of Game
The best tool for social integration since the invention of beer and happy hours.
Release date on our machines
Septembre 1998, comme par hasard le moment où les jeux de baston sont devenus ultra cool. Ou alors il y aurait un lien direct entre… oh bordel !
Developer
Namco Limited, Production I.G, Inc., my new favourite company for the next few months.
Publisher
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd. The dudes who made the PlayStation, that is.
Tekken 3 : available on the PS Store, nothing more ! Some people deserve a slap.
FPS, fighting games, racing games, same thing! I rarely got into them. I'd play a bit of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat from time to time, or even Soul Blade, but never for more than ten minutes, otherwise I'd get bored to death. Everything changed with Tekken 3. No matter which friend's house I spent the day at, EVERYONE HAD IT AND WAS PLAYING IT FOR HOURS! Like Street Fighter II, but newer, more current, futuristic, innovative, revolutionary and... um, plantigrade, actually. Get it? Like the bear in the roster! HAHA! Um... okay. I had to get into Tekken 3 too. It was a matter of survival in that sometimes very cruel microcosm called secondary school. Some of my friends played it, and so did other friends. However, if these two groups of friends found themselves in the same room, they would slaughter each other in a second. Even my German pen pal played it! Why do I find that exotic? No idea. The fact remains that not worshipping Tekken at that time led to the outright destruction of the persona we all created for ourselves. Like showing up at secondary school without an Eastpak backpack, or wearing supermarket trainers instead of the latest Etnies or Adidas, depending on the social and fashion group you belonged to.
Integration through fighting
And just as I enthusiastically traded in my old, colourful primary school jogging bottoms for baggy skater trousers when I entered pre-adolescence, I succumbed to the Tekken tidal wave, nodding my head with a big smile as I was swept away. My principles of rebelling against anything that followed fashion never lasted very long. This was even less true when it came to video games.
Billions of blue blistering brawls
I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that Tekken 3 established itself as the ultimate benchmark for versus fighting games for quite some time, and not by chance. I don't have the sales figures or reviews in front of me, but our intuition as ultra-addicted kids is worth much more than all those indisputable facts. The large number of characters available, who were funny, endearing and mega stylish all at once, weighed heavily in the cosmic karma of this mental game. The same goes for the blocky 3D graphics so typical of the PlayStation, which we guzzled down by the hectolitre at the time. But last but not least: an impressive arsenal of moves to throw around! Yes, the fighters' move list was endless. Most of its competitors didn't offer a third of the techniques, and didn't require us to spend six months mastering the subtleties of our favourite Iron Fist Tournament participants. And by subtleties, I mean big punches that are impossible to dodge and take away three-quarters of your opponent's health bar. I'm sure everyone understands.
In short, you could certainly have fun playing Tekken by hammering all the buttons on the controller, but the real goal was to beat your opponent as stylishly as possible, especially with a series of attacks they didn't even know about. ‘If you couldn't perfectly control five characters at fourteen and a half, you couldn't be our friend, sorry.’ - quote from myself, near the school gym, circa 1999. Every day, we managed to impress our rivals by pulling off some crazy move, either because we had memorised it in practice mode or because we did it by chance, sometimes pretending that we had done it on purpose. And as time went on, luck gave way to mastery, in gameplay that was refined to the maximum. No combo bar, no break gauge, no super onslaught charges. Just timing and learning to empty the enemy's life bar.
As in many titles of the same genre, Tekken 3 presents each of its protagonists with a more or less detailed background. Well, actually, it does better than the other games I knew at the time. No need to learn too much anyway; why get attached to someone who's going to end up in a coma in a minute? A storyline is cobbled together to justify the presence of so many people in the same place, whose desire to beat each other up turns into a visceral need, with a hint of saving the world in the background, to make it seem like there's something at stake. And we're happy to believe it. It's still better crafted than Armageddon, and much less cringe-worthy. Each participant has their own designated ring and specific design, which is the basis of a versus fighting game. Even if, in the end, it doesn't revolve around a well-defined visual identity, well, never mind.
Between that and something more coherent but boring after five minutes - Mortal KombCOUGH COUGH! What? Nothing. I couldn't put my finger on what made us so addicted to the atmosphere of this title, but there was definitely something ultra cool about it. Maybe that's where all the magic came from, after all: it brought together people from all walks of life and all backgrounds, without anyone really understanding why. A kind of utopia that glorifies violence, but retains a form of unalterable happiness. I don't know, I'm improvising a bit too much here. And when I talk about people from all walks of life, that applies as much to the game as it does to real life. If some of my friends at the time had known that I was also playing with other friends, and that as a result, they could have played together too, it would have blown more than a few of them away!
I can't count the number of days and evenings when Tekken changed the mood from ‘not great’ to ‘crazy, the coolest moment of my life’. There was one time in particular, in the spring of 1999, when I first encountered the game. My German pen pal had arrived four or five days earlier and, frankly... yeah. We were seriously bored. It wasn't his fault, he was just suffering from the gloomy atmosphere in the family flat like everyone else before him. Around 7pm, Lionel Mortadelle arrived with the Tekken 3 CD-ROM in one hand and his parents behind him. The old folks went off for a drink while I got a huge gaming shock in front of the telly. After that, my pen pal and I were never bored again. Two months later, I moved in with him for a week. The first thing he showed me was his copy of Tekken 3. HAHAHAHAH! What a crazy time we had.
Tekken 3 may have set a new standard in terms of technicality, brain/controller coordination, and a couple of other complicated terms, but it also offers several options for simply having fun without any hassle. I am referring to the two most brilliant modes ever invented: Tekken Ball and Tekken Force! The first puts us in the shoes of beach volleyball players, where the ball has been replaced by a large inflatable beach toy. The second simply transforms versus fighting into a beat 'em up that's not half bad! And of course, all the incredible moves of our favourite fighters are still available! Forget the bonus level in Street Fighter II where you smash a car, forget Streets of Rage, we have everything we want on a plate in Tekken 3!! But no, don't forget Streets of Rage or the bonus stage in SF2. Nonsense.
Electoo Rockool
Crazy gameplay, stylish atmosphere. Could we be in for a miraculous hat trick thanks to the music? Even better than that, actually! The soundtrack illuminates the beautiful face of Hwarang, makes Paul Phoenix and King's redneckery acceptable, and sublimates the secret love I had for Xiaoyu and Julia! And we get even more excited when we land a special attack right at the climax of its angry electro beat. Tekken 3 only offers this kind of techno-rock that shows off, big beat mixed with various influences, a sub-genre that we heard in the late 90s in films (Blade), series (Alias), adverts, and of course video games (the first two Gran Turismo). This style quickly fell into oblivion in the early 2000s, didn't it? I don't know if anyone on Earth misses this distinctive sound; I don't really, except for a few legendary albums that have stood the test of time. Except also for video game soundtracks and the nostalgia they carry with them. The pattern of a heavy bass line accompanied by incisive percussion, all driven by a melody saturated with crackling sounds, gave it such punch! We listened to it and immediately proclaimed ourselves the coolest teenagers on the planet. That feeling of invincibility evaporated as soon as the PlayStation was turned off, when we caught the eye of a guy four years older than us who stole all our pocket money. Too bad. Unless you know the songs by heart, guessing which character they refer to is a matter of sheer luck, as the sounds and rhythms are so similar, with a few exceptions. But as you listen more and more, you begin to recognise certain arrangements that perfectly match the location and the associated fighter. And that makes it even more enjoyable. In fact, no one knows this, but even today, I still sometimes put on the complete soundtrack when I'm feeling a bit down. After that, nothing can get me down for a good week, it always gives me a crazy boost of energy! It's just that it's becoming more and more difficult to admit and show in public. Because of my advanced age, and all that...
Noslapgia moment
School holidays. I'm going to spend a few days in Brittany at my dad's, with the Tekken CD-ROM safely tucked away in my bag. Sorry Dad, but this time there'll be no eco-goofy adventures in Abe's Exoddus, or blowing up organic mechas in R-Type Delta! I've made up my mind, I'm going to devote all my free time to getting better at that fighting game! I'm going to burn through the training mode, write down the most devastating button combinations on a piece of paper and reread them fifty times before going to sleep for a week! Ling Xiaoyu, Julia Chang, King, Lei Wulong, Gon! You'll never break as many mouths as you will between my feverish and soon-to-be unbeatable hands! Randall Geyser and Leyland Lampion, the mates I've played this game with the most, you who just beat me up whenever I hang out at your place, in a week it'll be over! You won't be so cocky anymore!
Jacky Palmeraie, who would later introduced me to Bloody Roar 2 and lived next door, joined my sessions, but more as a sparring partner. No worries, mate, you made up for it by beating me 6-3, 6-3 at tennis. Back in Normandy and proud of my new skills, the three of us gathered in Leyland's room and turned on the console. I chose Julia, ready to unleash a Tequila Sunrise Low Kick Slash Uppercut combo. Randall chose Yoshimitsu. The result was clear: I bit the dust even harder than before. Those little bastards had practised ten times more and learned a hundred times more moves than me! No one had said anything; everyone had been scheming in their own corner. All that tryharding coupled with abandoning my journey through Breath of Fire III for nothing! I had to get my revenge, so I chose Dr. Bosconovitch and spent the whole fight lying on the floor, burping on that idiot Gun Jack.
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