We all remember when fighting games first became
popular. Who could forget? The arcades were raking it in on popular
fighting titles like Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat and those two
games ruled the 16-bit generation with their amazing home console
releases. But that was just the beginning. In the mid 90's arcades
were seeing more and more 3D fighting games with hits like Virtua
Fighter and Tekken and people were exposed to a much more flowing
style of one on one combat in digital form. One of which I'm going to
review today, and that would be Tekken 2.
Now, I didn't actually own Tekken 2 during the
height of it's popularity, instead a friend of mine who was getting
the original Playstation along with this game was the one who brought
it to my attention. I had seen the ad's for the original Tekken but I
was too caught up in Battle Arena Toshinden to pay it any mind. Both
games were considered heavy hitters in the 3D fighting genre at the
time but when Tekken 2 hit the arcades and the Playstation in late
1996 it helped to pull the Tekken franchise away to become the
premiere fighting franchise of it's time. It was just heads and
shoulders better than the first Tekken and sported slightly better
graphics and fighters that had a crazy amount of flexibility to them
while playing the game. Sure, Tekken 2 would soon be trounced by
Tekken 3 (a far superior game) but for it's time Tekken 2 was
considered the end all of home fighters and helped to move it's share
of Playstation consoles.
My friend was so in love with this game that when
we talked about video games he often talked about Tekken 2 and how
much he was playing it or how much the game meant to him. He must
have played this game non-stop (along with NBA Live '97) on his
Playstation for the better part of the year until he started getting
more and more games, but I'll never forget how excited he was to be
getting Tekken 2 and his Playstation for Christmas. Oddly enough,
that Christmas I received an Atari Jaguar. Yeah, that may seem like a
downer to most people reading this blog but the Atari Jaguar was a
system I fell quite hard for and I really enjoyed a good chunk of
it's library, despite the popular belief that the system was
garbage.
Honestly, I didn't own Tekken 2 until I
re-purchased a Playstation out of nostalgia in the summer of 2007. At
that time I had also purchased Tekken and far prefer it to Tekken 2,
though both are really great games to own if you have a Playstation
console in your collection. It was during this time that I would fall
in love with the PS1 and play a huge number of games for it I've
never experienced before, mainly the Tekken series and Final Fantasy
VII, and I finally began to put it on a pedestal alongside consoles
like the NES and SNES. It's funny too because I owned a Playstation
upon launch in 1995, then I had re-bought one sometime in 2000
(getting rid of it soon after), and then got one again in 2007 out of
nostalgic reasons. It was the 3rd time owning the console
that did it for me and I've been playing it quite regularly since
then.
Anyhow, it's now time to discuss Tekken 2 as a
game. To kick things off the game controls pretty smooth and has a
nice breezy feel to it, I would rank this among one of Tekken 2's
bright spots as it gives you a nice free flowing experience while
engaging in combat. I wouldn't say the controls are perfect but it's
certainly something that stands out when playing the game.
Graphically it was probably a lot better looking back in 1997 than it
is now in 2013 but that doesn't really matter one bit as I'm enjoying
playing it again after quite a while and graphics NEVER sway my
opinion on a game. It's blocky but it looks a lot better than the
other 3D fighting games it was up against at the time like Virtual
Fighter and Battle Arena Toshinden, both of which didn't have sequels
as of yet when this game was released. Sure, the graphical difference
between Tekken 3 and 2 are pretty vast but so wasn't the difference
between part 2 and the original, so it's definitely improved upon
it's previous game and that goes a long way. The music in this game
is pretty standard fare as well as the sound effects, nothing really
shines in this department and all in all I'd say it's nothing special
and was even beat out by earlier PS1 fighters like Toshinden. That's
a complaint I've always had with the Tekken games on the PS1, they
just never nailed down a good audio track or gave us any good sound
effects, they seemed to really want to deliver a pretty looking game
and that was it. The music, if you're wondering, was not much more
than cheesy sounding techno music that played while you were in
combat.
But it was fun, and at the end of the day that's
really all that matters when it comes to video games. I enjoyed it,
my friends enjoyed it, and it still holds up among retro gaming fans
who still love to fire up their original Playstation systems. And as long as original Playstation gamers are still retrogaming on their beloved PSone's than Tekken 2 will always have somebody to play it. A timeless classic? Nah. But it's a good fighting game that was a huge system seller back in the day and a title that was a part of a franchise that helped the PS1 dominate the gaming scene in the late 90's. And that's all it needs to be.
Graphics/Visuals - 8.0
Sound/Music - 6.5
Control/Handling - 8.5
Fun/Enjoyment - 8.0
Twitter - @OfficialRVGA
© 2013 Bill Mulligan
