Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Playthrough with Kazuya. A brief recap: for the longest time I hated Tekken. Growing up in the '90s, I didn't have a PlayStation, I had a PC, which I got Virtua Fighter 2 for. But all my friends kept telling me VF sucked and Tekken was the best. So my Tekken resentment set in pretty early. Much later, I bought Tekken 5 for the PS2 and didn’t like it. I found it much more difficult to play than Virtua Fighter or Dead or Alive. And then a few years later, I bought this and Tekken 2 on the PSN store and still didn’t like them.
But I learnt how to beat them, at least. The CPU in this game is horrible, it gets way too aggressive/block heavy way too early on (see the first round of the fight against Law) and there is a lot of questionable stuff in this game (see 4:15-4:20 for example). The way the CPU ducks your throw attempts then instantly throws you… Namco taking a page from the Virtua Fighter 2 garbage A.I. book right there. To beat this game with Kazuya, keep trying to use throws and failing that, do his spin kick attack. This move is two kicks, the CPU usually blocks the first hit but won’t block the second.
Tekken was originally released in arcades in 1994, the PS port came out the following year. This port is great, featuring arcade perfect graphics (the graphics in the arcade version weren't great but shhhh), two soundtracks to choose from and the hidden bosses, who were unplayable in the arcade version, can be unlocked and played as here. It also features FMV endings for the non-unlockable characters, which have aged in a terribly good way, but at least they were there -something Virtua Fighter lacked (and still lacks!).
Finally, we have to talk about Kazuya's ending, which is fairly infamous. There is only one piece of ending theme music in Tekken 1, which sounds totally inappropriate for Kazuya's ending. Then there's the fact that it doesn't really look like he throwing his father off the cliff, more like there's some guy just out of shot who has an invisible wire connected to Heihachi, and yanks him out of Kazuya's arms. And then finally there's the smirk. :| :)
Playthrough with Kazuya. A brief recap: for the longest time I hated Tekken. Growing up in the '90s, I didn't have a PlayStation, I had a PC, which I got Virtua Fighter 2 for. But all my friends kept telling me VF sucked and Tekken was the best. So my Tekken resentment set in pretty early. Much later, I bought Tekken 5 for the PS2 and didn’t like it. I found it much more difficult to play than Virtua Fighter or Dead or Alive. And then a few years later, I bought this and Tekken 2 on the PSN store and still didn’t like them.
But I learnt how to beat them, at least. The CPU in this game is horrible, it gets way too aggressive/block heavy way too early on (see the first round of the fight against Law) and there is a lot of questionable stuff in this game (see 4:15-4:20 for example). The way the CPU ducks your throw attempts then instantly throws you… Namco taking a page from the Virtua Fighter 2 garbage A.I. book right there. To beat this game with Kazuya, keep trying to use throws and failing that, do his spin kick attack. This move is two kicks, the CPU usually blocks the first hit but won’t block the second.
Tekken was originally released in arcades in 1994, the PS port came out the following year. This port is great, featuring arcade perfect graphics (the graphics in the arcade version weren't great but shhhh), two soundtracks to choose from and the hidden bosses, who were unplayable in the arcade version, can be unlocked and played as here. It also features FMV endings for the non-unlockable characters, which have aged in a terribly good way, but at least they were there -something Virtua Fighter lacked (and still lacks!).
Finally, we have to talk about Kazuya's ending, which is fairly infamous. There is only one piece of ending theme music in Tekken 1, which sounds totally inappropriate for Kazuya's ending. Then there's the fact that it doesn't really look like he throwing his father off the cliff, more like there's some guy just out of shot who has an invisible wire connected to Heihachi, and yanks him out of Kazuya's arms. And then finally there's the smirk. :| :)
