Super Fighter Team’s first “modern-classic” put the developer on the map, molding a Chinese-developed Genesis game into a reworked and more polished RPG players could tackle in the U.S. or in PAL territories.  1996’s Xin Qigai Wangzi was given an English facelift by SFT in 2006, resulting in the first commercial Genesis game since 1998 – Beggar Prince.

Given the original title translates to The New Prince and the Pauper, it should come as no surprise Beggar Prince borrows its initial premise from the classic Mark Twain work.  Bored with the confines of the castle, the Prince of Shatt sneaks out of the castle and meets a pauper who uncannily resembles him.  Predictably, the two trade places but unbeknownst to the kingdom, the minister has been plotting to overthrow the king and upon witnessing the switch, throws his plan into action.

Seeing as the title is on the Genesis format, even though Prince is a 2006 release, players can’t walk into the game with a 2006 mentality.  That being said, Beggar Princes looks amazing compared to other games on the system, with a ton of detail placed in the environments and while the character models are small, they feature a lot of color, and the spell effects receive the same appropriate attention.  The sound drags down the presentation quite a bit, however, as most of the music is forgettable but the effects do their job.

Thankfully, the developers squashed a great number of the bugs plaguing the original Eastern release, but the title’s extremely challenging game play may make or break the title for players.  In Eastern RPG fashion, the enemy encounters are frequent and since players control no one more than the Prince the entire game, players will have a long quest ahead of them.  Also, unlike most turn-based RPGs, Prince has quite a bit more strategy involved thanks to the stamina system (which can be a good thing depending on how much you like to think).  While players will uncover a good amount of spells, weapons and items to use, the monsters are brutal if players don’t level up properly and the challenge may turn off a number of people.

Those who are looking for a challenging RPG will be right at home with Beggar Prince but the casual need not apply here.  If you’re willing to take the dive, however, you’ll find a visually appealing game that will last you quite some time.  The title is only available in nicely packaged limited quantities at superfighter.net and if production stops on the game, it may raise beyond its current $40 retail value.

GemuBaka Final Review Score: 3 of 5

It’s no secret that when it came to SEGA’s systems, the U.S. got boned on a ton of the company’s obscure and unique game titles. One of the company’s offerings that has a solid fanbase was the Rent A Hero franchise. It even, made an appearance in the wacky Fighters MegaMix for the Sega Saturn, but unlike the never-before-seen instances in a game such as Super Smash Bros., no attempt is ever made to explain Rent A Hero or garner fan interest in the series. Aside from guest appearances in character (Fighters MegaMix) and spirit (Samba de Amigo), the character did enjoy two full-featured game releases – Rent A Hero on the Megadrive and Rent-A-Hero No. 1 on the SEGA Dreamcast. On top of that, the Japanese Virtual Console has featured the Megadrive version since 2007. Back in 2004, it seemed like the Dreamcast version finally had a shot at a U.S. release via a release handled by Cool, which ported the title to the Japanese Xbox after SEGA collapsed as a hardware developer. It just wasn’t meant to be, though, meaning the only way for players to get their hands on the full Dreamcast title was through the means any red-blooded Dreamcast owner took part in – they imported the Japanese version.

If Rent A Hero was such a great title, wouldn’t more people have played it and wouldn’t SEGA have given it more of a chance to release in the U.S.? Why couldn’t Nintendo release the imported Rent A Hero on the Virtual Console? Well, most likely, it stems from the language barrier presented by the game. While most of what Americans get to see makes the title seem like a no-frills action title, Rent A Hero, is more of an adventure, requiring players to embark on fetch quests and investigation before they get to the meaty parts where they just rock the faces of injustice with cybernetic fists. Now don’t misunderstand this – the fetching and investigation do not go anywhere near the degree of that found in Shenmue, so don’t walk away just yet. Rent A Hero is more of an adventure-like RPG (in fact, the original Megadrive version used the Phantasy Star III graphics engine), where instead of participating in random turn-based battles, players engaged in hand-to-hand combat. With this, players will be talking to a lot of people, meaning there is a lot of dialog to translate, but the game’s inherent humor, somewhat to the degree of SeGaGaGa toward the end of the Dreamcast’s life, gives the title some legs to stand on and creates a unique, quirky identity to the title, which also allows it to poke fun at SEGA itself among other references.

While both versions of the game share a similar story, the Dreamcast version presents players with the opening premise: Taro is new to the neighborhood as his family has just moved in after his father receives a job in town. The game kicks off with Taro directly in the middle of a housewarming party, which involves the family’s neighbors, including a portly fellow who is eating the party’s food faster than Taro’s mother can prepare it. In a pinch, Taro’s father prompts him to order some takeout food and when he makes the phone call, a mysterious person claims Taro has won a promotion that discounts his dinner and throws in a free prize that is still in its testing stages. Anyone that understands the concept of foreshadowing should gather that when the package arrives, it ends up being the game’s trademark hero suit. At this point in time, in a desperate attempt to liven up the party, Taro’s father has donned a Godzilla-type costume and when he spots Taro fashioning his new super hero suit, he gloats and challenges Taro into a staged fight to entertain the guests. However, after Taro throws a light, playful jab, the power of the suit sends his father flying across the room, smashing him into the wall. From this point on, Taro realizes the suit isn’t just a toy and the events that unfold from here will shape him into a true hero if he can handle the responsibility.

While the story premise is fantastic and becomes much more involved while the player gets into the more serious missions, everything unfolds in text form, which means if you don’t understand Japanese, a good majority of the game’s content and charm will be entirely lost on you. Admittedly, I will say my Japanese is extremely far from fluent and there was a good bit of context I had to look up, meaning players may miss out on a few extras by not being able to read the questions there are being asked in a few of the game’s scenarios. However, this isn’t to say this a fault of a game developed in Japan, it’s just the standard U.S. player will most likely be turned away from the experience or become quite confused as to what they are supposed to do next and without a concept of dialog, players will miss out on the game’s humor and charm.

By accepting the responsibilities of the hero suit, Taro has now officially become the Rent A Hero and the game plays out appropriately based on the title of the game – along with the suit, the Service Café (or SECA to throw out an obvious reference) has delivered a SECA Creamcast (there’s two references) to Taro, which he uses to log onto an online interface to check for people looking to hire him for his services. As a rookie, though, he isn’t going to receive very many high-profile missions until he earns the trust of the city. This means players will get their feet wet handing out promotional pamphlets, delivering a love letter and delivering take-out food while maybe getting to take a few harmless punks until requests that ask you to protect deliveries or assist the police with criminal matters. The game follows a nice, logical progression with tasks that increase in difficulty as the game goes on and the earlier missions really allow for the player to get a grasp on the controls. Even without Japanese knowledge, the Creamcast interface is pretty straightforward and easy to use and players shouldn’t have any troubles launching any of the games missions. A lot of variety is involved with the missions as well and there are a chunk of optional missions that will provide Taro with cash, which become important when he becomes an official Rent A Hero and must pay a rental fee on the suit and purchase other items that will make him stronger.

The game’s controls are extremely straightforward and if you’re a seasoned SEGA connoisseur, the fighting engine will feel all too familiar to you. Players can do the basics such as initiate a single-button combo string, jump and block, but the variety in Taro’s moveset stems from a separate button that players hold down until a charge meter reaches the desired position for more powerful attacks – yes, this is the scheme used in Spikeout, a SEGA game that actually did release notably in the U.S in 2005 for the Xbox, even though low-key arcade versions of the title had been pumped out in the late ‘90s.

While the control scheme is simple, this also means there is very little variation in what Taro can do in a fight as any new techniques learned must be swapped out – you can only have one combo and a handful of charge specials at any given time. This will really turn away fighting enthusiasts who are now spoiled by Virtua Fighter-sized move lists and it doesn’t really help that the fighting mechanics are slightly broken. Rent-A-Hero No. 1 tries to balance out the heavy-hitting techniques a little by having them drain the battery of the hero suit, but when players get low, they can use their cash to purchase more batteries (which turns into a gratuitous plug for Sanyo). However, if you’re keen on exploring every inch of the fighting mechanics, these broken mechanics really work in your favor, providing some really ridiculous juggles and cheap repetition tactics with moves that require no battery usage. While I’m sure it was unintentional on the part of SEGA, the fighting can get a little crazy if you mix and match your moves correctly, but, otherwise, the enemy AI does tend to be a little on the lame side, merely charging in fist-first to try and land their predetermined combo on you before you can pull off a move. This makes sense when Taro is taking on a group of thugs, but it comes off as cheap AI when it’s mano-a-mano.

However, when you boil it down, each button does what it is supposed to do with great accuracy. There are a few hiccups in having to double-tap a direction to dash while in the middle of a fight and some camera angles do not put your fight in the greatest perspective, but, overall, the fights are well done for what players are given, which, admittedly isn’t much. Most of the fun in the game revolves around the campy humor and references the game throws around, which occur outside of the battles. The control scheme differs just a tad of difference while not in battle, but this mostly revolves around interacting with the environment and alternating between Taro and his Rent A Hero form. On paper, switching forms doesn’t sound like a big deal, but people in environment will react to you differently depending on which form you are in, giving you different dialog bits and sometimes the storyline calls for Taro to be in a specific form.

For the most part, players accept a mission, talk to the person hiring Taro, carry out whatever task they desire (which is most often ensuring the safe delivery or protection of something), rough up any goon that gets in your way and get paid. Even though the game does give players some freedom in deciding what to do and offers a number of different areas to explore (with other areas of city accessed by train), the title’s progress is extremely linear, but players will still be able to sink a handful of hours into it. The best way I can describe Rent-A-Hero, really, is that it is a short attention span Shenmue: There’s plenty of fighting to do, but you’ll have to do a fair share of footwork, fetch questing and conversation to get there. As I alluded to before, it’s not nearly as drawn out as it is in Shenmue, but anyone looking to try and get into this title should be aware that is equal parts adventure to the amount of action. This could really turn away a lot of players, most obviously because of the language barrier, but anyone that sticks with it will find it to be a fairly satisfying adventure.

I’ve often heard stories about Rent-A-Hero No. 1 being a low-budget title for SEGA and if this shows anywhere, it is definitely in the title’s animation and sound. While the graphics and character models are very typical of any SEGA release for the time, the animation is hardly on par with other titles on the system. Of course, the Dreamcast can do better than the graphics presented in Rent-A-Hero No. 1 and they are passable, but the animation is noticeably lacking during most of Taro’s actions, even in his general running animation. There is no voice acting in the entire game aside from some battle groans and grunts, so the game puts the characters through some ridiculously overexaggerated animations to convey the action of conversation. Players will also probably notice all sorts of clipping and pop-in quirks with the game as well. Although these do not tend to occur during fights, they add to the group of nagging elements that are extremely visible throughout the title.

The audio in Rent-A-Hero No. 1, however, has got to be the lowest point of the title. There is no voice acting to be had in any part of the game. While it is fairly understandable that with the expansive amounts of dialog featured in the game, the disc probably wouldn’t be able to contain full voice-overs, having important cutscenes and critical story points pop out with some voices could have taken the game a long way. Overall, the music is pretty uninspiring as well, save for the classic Rent-A-Hero theme that belts out after the first scenario (with the accompanying video providing references to the game’s Megadrive release). A lot of the sound effects are just as serviceable and get the job done, but more effects and some variation would have went a long way for the title. Most of the game’s audio gets the job done, but the real offender overall is in what is missing from the title – a little more in the elements of voice, music and sound could have went a long way here.

Even though this Dreamcast entry is essentially a remake of the original Megadrive version, it does take its own liberties, such as introducing Rent-A-Hiroko (your female “sidekick”), arranging the dialog to bring the references up to date (Ms. Naomi, for example), so if you have for some reason played the original title, there is a whole lot more to experience in this title. Rent-A-Hero No. 1 definitely carries the allure of a character U.S players could never get their hands on (unless you are an Xbox pirate with the scheduled domestic release that got canned; it was reviewed by a few outlets so there has to be some copies floating around somewhere) and it is one of the more quirky titles on the system, which makes it a relatively appealing game. The fetching and language barriers will probably be the biggest detractor for U.S. audiences, however, but with all of the guides available online, if you’re looking for a unique experience, Rent-A-Hero should fit the bill, even with all of its shortcomings.

GemuBaka Final Review Score: 3 of 5

While you’re going to have to know a decent amount of Japanese or have a guide by your side to fully understand Rent-A-Hero No. 1, the title is another example of SEGA of America hesitating to pull the trigger on a U.S. release of a quirky and original concept. That being said, the title does have its share of issues such as its barely serviceable visuals, lack of quality sound, severely broken and repetitive fighting mechanics and sometimes slow pacing. However, the story and dialog is a good bit entertaining and filled with references to SEGA and the title really banks on its humor and charm. Even though the fighting is broken, it does allow for some customization and those who tinker with it will be able to go to town with some impressive juggles. There is very little deviation from the linear game progression, but the wide variety of tasks and characters the player runs into – from your female counterpart to who eventually becomes your archnemesis – are interesting, even though there is no spoken dialog. This title is above average in every single way, but its not hard to see from its originality, quirky nature and inaccessibility in the U.S. why it has a cult following.

In the summer of 2004, CAPCOM’s Mega Man Anniversary Collection (MMAC) brought a tear to the eyes of many a gamer who reveled in the innovation and tight gameplay the Blue Bomber has brought to us since the earlier days of the NES.  Not only did the compilation give us all eight games in the original series, but it added a bunch of extras such as segments of the animated series, extra artwork and bonus games.  Now after much delay and speculation, the futuristic Mega Man X finds itself thrown into the collection treatment and the result is mediocre at best.

Originally, CAPCOM had no plans to release a collection based off the X series, but after much demand, we now have the first six Mega Man X games on one disc.  The rush to put the game on the market results in extremely bland menus to navigate - while it’s straightforward and quick to use, it lacks the substance and flash the interactive menus from MMAC featured.  There was so little emphasis put on the menus, it seems the programmers forgot to add 2006 to the title screen instead of 2005, based on the original November release date.

Yeah, that’s mighty critical of me, but why did I notice this you ask?  Because I sat staring at the title screen for about two minutes waiting for something to happen.  No special intro video, no clever teasers into the game, nothing, and that’s the premise of this disc.  Mega Man X Collection is nothing more than a collection - you get the six X games and pretty much nothing else.  While most of the X series can hang on its own, the lack of any sort of shiny, decorative wrapping paper serves up as a real bummer to the tried-and-true fans who will be expecting an entire world of extras.  Sure, you have the average-at-best, Rockman Battle and Chase, but aside from that, all you have is a bunch of artwork and no real incentives to unlock everything.

The emulation is handled extremely well as the X games have been shoveled over from the 16-bit and 32-bit originals in pixel-perfect form.  Even Mega Man X2's C4 chip was faithfully rendered in, providing the wire framing and rotation effects shown throughout the game.  As an added bonus, CAPCOM opted to go with the 32-bit version of X3, released at the advent of the Playstation and Saturn, which added anime cut scenes and cd-quality music to the series.  The sound is just as spot-on and the extra power in the current-generation systems essentially cuts out all the slowdown experienced in the cartridge versions of the game and load times are virtually non-existent.

Since the collection depends on the games themselves, the dilemma of whether or not Mega Man X Collection is worth thirty dollars arises.  At seven total games on the disc, after paying tax, the bottom line is you’re paying about five bucks a game, which isn’t half bad.  But on the same token it isn’t half good either as, much like the original Mega Man series, the longer the series drags on, the stinkier it gets.  The storylines become more and more incoherent as the series goes on and by X4, I swear the developers started getting robot master names by throwing darts at random pages in the dictionary - in fact, I hear Anorexic Anteater and Flammable Toaster just missed the cut in the series.  Having X-X6 on the same disc gives us the good (X, X2, X3), the alright (X4, X5) and the “wtf?” (X6).

CAPCOM patched up the nagging control issues of MMAC for the Nintendo Gamecube by switching the default jump and shoot controls to their natural order.  However, the options menus in the game will accommodate whatever control scheme you wish to implement.  The extra options, while they are commonplace in just about any game, really fix the major fault of the previous collection.  Being able to switch around the control scheme may come in handy as having the default jump, shoot and dash spread across three buttons on the same plane on the controller may provide to be a thumb-stretcher for some players.

Basically, what Mega Man X Collection comes down to is how much you enjoyed the X series.  The collection gives players a faithful re-creation of the original six games, but not much else.  It seems this disc was a means for CAPCOM to give yammering X fans a reason to quiet down, as not much effort was put into the collection aside from porting X’s first six adventures to the current-gen systems.  The addition of the Battle and Chase game adds a little charm to the title, but not enough to make it shine like Anniversary Collection did.  While X collection shows how great the series kicked off, it unfortunately also shows how stale the series has become.  Providing a mix of good and bad, Mega Man X Collection will serve the true X-heads and collectors alike, but casual gamers may find the absurd plot lines and progressively difficult game play a little detouring.

Gemubaka Final Review Score: 3 of 5

 

Thinking back to 2001, I recall the two final brand new Dreamcast titles I bought from retail were Confidential Mission, and this downright bizarre point-and-click adventure game from Xilam. It wasn’t by chance, really, as if you were a child of the late ‘90s, you may per chance recall a very obscure Saturday morning cartoon renamed for the U.S. audiences as Space Goofs (Some of our foreign readers may also have known the series as Home to Rent, depending on your territory). While the series quickly went nowhere, much like other shows of that nature, it definitely has its cult-like status among people from that time looking for some nostalgia. It was a strange and crazy animation birthed out of France in 1996, so it made perfect sense that when the game was announced out of nowhere, Ubisoft would be bringing the U.S. this late Dreamcast title under the series’ original name.

The title, which was also developed for PC, served as a sort of United States “conclusion” to the series, which in 2001, came two years after the series stopped airing. The premise of the game sets up the introduction of the series as a whole – a group of five aliens are vacationing in space, when a collision with an asteroid sends their spacecraft crashing into Earth. Conveniently, they crash land right next to an empty home for rent (hence, the U.K. title) and take to occupying the abode until they can figure out how to get back into space. What is thought to be a simple process of repairing a spaceship turns into several years where the aliens remain out the sight of humans, while chasing away potential buyers of the house. The game kicks off just as the genius alien Etno finally pieces together a means to return home, but at the same time, a mysterious evil doctor pinpoints these alien life forms and sends a bounty hunter out for their heads and technology.

Stupid Invaders only offers up the single-player adventure, but this alone will keep players wrapped up for a number of hours. The game’s story elements are ripped straight from the animated series and judging from the dialog and gags thrown, it is evident the developers stuck as close to the series’ original material as possible. Given the lapse in time and the media the game appears on, the game goes a little bit further in fields of raunchiness and maturity than the Saturday morning cartoon and on most fronts, the game does succeed on being funny. The player gets to experience a number of viewpoints as the title switches control between the five aliens, switching up the main character personalities and material to keep the story elements fresh. Even though there is a lack of modes in the game, Xilam packed everything it had into the adventure and it explodes with Stupid Invaders charm.

Contrary to the cartoon, everything in the Stupid Invaders game has been rendered in 3D, however, the graphics sport a heavily-inked look with an emphasis on colors to resemble a typical animation. In 2001, the title didn’t have to fight amongst a crowd of other point-and-click titles as the genre was all but dead, especially to consoles at that time, making Stupid Invaders one of the most detailed adventure games seen for its time. Everything from the characters to the environments look great and animate well, aside from a few hiccups here and there as players navigate through environments and approach certain items. The in-game text and action icons don’t exactly have the same pop and are rather small in size, but, overall, the graphics are a treat for those who appreciate animation.

Thanks in part to the cartoon voice actors reprising their roles in the game, the sound in the game stays true to the source. The rest of the cast is slouch, though, as every character confronted in the title is voiced appropriately, which really makes the interactive segments of the game enjoyable. Outside of voice acting, though, the sounds and music are appropriate to the environment and there a number of areas where the ambient nature of environment is given favor over music, emphasizing the surreal nature of the situations. Through some of the scene changes, there can be an awkward pause in the music or sound effects, but, overall, the audio in Stupid Invaders really sets the tone of the title.

Gameplay and control-wise, there is not much to really explain about Stupid Invaders. Just like any other point-and-click adventure ever created, players use onscreen cursors to navigate characters and manipulate the environment and progress is made by using collected items in the environments or conversing with other characters. Stupid Invaders keeps things simple by limited players to just examing or grabbing items and the inventory allows for some items to be combined. The results leave players with a simple command scheme that is easy to understand due to the different icons used.

Although Stupid Invaders revolves around puzzle solving per the nature of its genre, it does serve as a suitable challenge, mostly due to the obscene amount of ways players can die. There are a number of bizarre ways to perish in the title, making players load their previous save back up. Admittedly, a number of these animations are quite humorous, but when players repeat the same death over and over without any inclination of what they are doing wrong, it can become a tad frustrating. Some of the item interactions can be a little nonsensical at times as well and most of the time it isn’t obvious what players are supposed to do until they die in a trial and error process. Regardless, Stupid Invaders is a suitable challenge for anyone looking for more in the adventure genre and the humorous nature of the title makes the challenge a little easier to swallow.

Given the title only features a single-player story to run through, there is virtually no reason to go back to the title once the player has finished the title. Some may want to experience new dialogs, experiment with different death animations or do a speed run, but it’s hard to believe most players will come back for more. The story is good enough to make players see through to the end and maybe come back after a couple of years has rolled by, but the first playthrough will take up only around four to six hours and if you use a walkthrough, you severely hurt the game’s longetivity as players that know exactly what to do can brush through the title in about an hour.

With the recent resurgence of adventure titles hitting the market, Stupid Invaders is a good title to come back to, especially if you are a Dreamcast fan. It is quirky, stuffed with humor and is a good throwback if the words Space Goofs mean anything to you. The wide span of characters is wholly entertaining, even though there are a few sections where the point of view is needlessly switched for an extremely short time and the presentation definitely makes the cast stand out.

GemuBaka Final Review Score: 3 of 5

If you’re a sucker for challenging adventure games with amusing death animations, there’s no competition on the Dreamcast. Stupid Invaders cleverly leaves of from where the decade-old Space Goofs cartoon series left U.S. viewers and cranks it up a notch with a bit more crudeness, all delivered with superb presentation. The game does get hung up with virtually no replayability, some of the puzzles lack logic and frequent deaths may frustrate players but there’s nothing like else like Stupid Invaders on the Dreamcast and it’s a one-of-a-kind experience.

Lar:  Possibly the most well known and popular fighter for the first Playstation, Namco's Tekken 3, brought 3D fighters back into the limelight with some pretty impressive fighting styles, nice graphics that pushed the PSX hardware to its limits and fast-paced action.

The game is a port of the arcade title and all the fighters, stages, music and moves where kept while adding more characters, an arranged soundtrack and a lot of extra modes to enjoy (Tekken Ball anyone?). The one downside of the transition is the graphics aren't as rich and the action isn't as brisk as the arcade version, but most players hardly seem to notice.

Tekken 3 keeps all the advances that Tekken 2 made while adding two major adjestments. The first is the abilty to sidestep to attack from the side or even your opponent's back and the second addition is the abilty to roll off the ground doing a fall and spring back up by tapping one of the punch buttons during impact by simply holding forward/back. These two additions majorly affect the feel of the game about as much as the reversals did in Tekken 2.

The game's controls are fairly simple:  You have a button that repersents a limb and pressing that button attacks with that limb. Adding joystick movements changes things around a little but because the command reflects what the fighters do, it's possible to learn 80% of a character's movelist by simply watching. Other unique command include throws which allow you to grapple an opponent or reversals which allow you to counter an opponent's attack.

Music is at it's higest popularity in Tekken 3, as no other Tekken games received quite as responsive reviews before or since (but we at Gemubaka do believe that there's just no beating the Tekken 2 soundtrack).  Everything here is electric and fits very nice. The PSX version comes with both the arcade's music and an arranged option to let you hear remixes of the themes (the last Tekken to do so). For my money, the arcade themes are the better deal.

The story of part three is presented decently as well as the game is the start of the Kazama-Mishima family feud: Jun Kazama failed to arrest Kazuya and instead was inpregnated by him. She then leaves the force and goes to the mountains to raise her son alone, while Kazuya's father, Heihachi, defeats him and throws him in a volcano. Fast forward 20 years later when Heihachi is working with world leaders attemping to achieve world peace: A young man named Jin has arrived in Tokyo calling himself Heihachi's Grandson and asking if he would train him to avenge his mother's death by the hands of a monster named Ogre.

There is of course much more to the story and each fighter has their own reasons for entering the tournament that was laid to capture Ogre. Since it's still early in Tekken's life at this point, most of the characters arent as hokey or run-down as we've seen them as of late (will Hwoarang ever give it up?).

The character Roster cleaned house for the time and brought mostly fresh faces to the table. The two downsides to this is most of them fight like one of the missing Tekken 2 characters (with a few added moves, of course - even Paul Phoenix received new moves) and all of the characters have returned so much now that replaying the game or playing it for the first time after all these years doesn't show why the change means anything. When all was said and done, the game's arcade release only introduced Xioayu's Kung-fu,Hwoarang's alternate style of Tae kwon Do, Eddy's Capoeria and Ogre's unique "Tekken 2 Medly" as brand new. The PSX version added new gimmick characters like Dr. Bostronavich and Gon (a character from the manga of the same name) to the table. Dispite all this, the roster is pretty expanded and there's a character for everyone. The game plays fairly balanced for most fighters of the time and you shouldn't get too bored unless you already know the characters from other titles.

Or unless you like your fighters hard, of course. The worst flaw of the PSX game is the difficulty is way too simple compared to the older Tekkens (or newer ones for that matter) and the Survivor Time Attack, Team Battle and the bonus game Tekken Ball dont make up for the ability to speed run the game in 2 minutes once you get an idea of how the moves work. Upon opening the game for the first time, I unlocked all characters except the two bonus console exclusives in about an hour. Again, unless you already know the other Tekkens inside and out then you shouldnt get too bored learning all the character's moves - which turns out to be the game's highpoint.

All in all, Tekken 3 is a balanced fighter that was great on the PSX. By today's standards, however, it fails to measure up to a couple of other entires in the Tekken series.


Nes:  Back in its infancy, Tekken was a sort of landmark release in the realm of fighters, arising as arguably the first true competitor to the Virtua Fighter series.  With the seventh installment of the series in the wings, waiting to be released, the series assuredly has a large fanbase and with a buddy-buddy relationship with Sony, gamers were starting to be treated to perfect to near-perfect arcade ports on 32-bit systems.  While Tekken 3 holds a place in many people's hearts as a favorite, I could just never see the same appeal in the entry.

If I could say there was one huge advancement the series made with Tekken 3 is in both arcades and the Playstation, the graphics are made so much cleaner, both in the characters and the backgrounds and the game's displays and menus are a ton more attractive.  While the jump in quality isn't exactly up to the same distance covered from 1 to 2, Tekken 3 was definitely the most attractive-looking 3D fighter for its time and when paired with the relatively solid animation, made the title quite a treat for onlookers when it first hit arcades.

While Tekken 3 has all of the punishing knockout sounds it still uses to this day, the music isn't nearly as memorable (for me that seems to be a trait for the series as a whole as the only stage tune that has ever stuck out in my mind is Tekken 5's Moonlit Meadow).  I usually have to go out of my way to pay attention to the music in the series, but that may be a good point as it just may be that I'm too engrossed in the action to pay any mind to the melodies.  Overall, though, the series' trademark ampped-up punches, kicks and throws will ring through players' ears and bring them even closer to Namco's representation of martial arts action.

When I look at the series' gameplay, however, I would have to say my biggest Tekken turnoff is in its huge lineup of "dial-a-combos" which half the time, don't really even register as combos.  As Lar pointed out, the difficulty took a nose dive in Tekken 3 and while each fighter has a long list of attacks at their disposal, only two are necessary against the computer and maybe five tops are necessary against human opponents unless they really know what they are doing.  I really can't agree with proper balance being present in Tekken 3 as I really don't consider characters that can rack up close to 50% damage with nil effort.  The easiest example of this is the player-whored Hwoarang who can launch opponents into the air with a few presses of left kick and juggle for extra damage with a few mere presses of right kick.  I've also publicly proved my point of this in arcades, choosing Hwoarang and blowing through the arcade mode without losing by doing nothing but repeatedly jamming on right kick.  I doubt this possible on the highest difficulty levels but even the normal difficulty should challenge players to do more than hammer on one button.

Another item I can agree with Lar on is the lack of effort required to unlock everything in the home version.  Blowing through such an easy game gets extremely tedious and even the addition of PSX exclusive characters and modes can't inflate the interest in single player for very long.  In contrast to other fighting popular fighting games, I became quite bored with Tekken 3's single player mode extremely fast and even bouts of multiplayer couldn't hold my attention for long (Tekken Ball is a bit of a different story, though).  I wouldn't necessarily put Tekken 3 at the bottom of the Tekken stack, but in my mind it is definitely bottom tier, perhaps only besting Tekken 4 and Tekken Tag.  The arcade version takes advantage of the hardware for its time and the port is nearly spot-on, but in my opinion, while Tekken 3 still shames many a pathetic fighting game, the game play isn't all there to make it as fun and memorable as some of the other entries were for me.

Final Thoughts:  For the first time, our opinions are mixed a bit, but we can't argue that picking up Tekken 3 is a good idea for fighting and Tekken enthusiasts, especially when it can be played on the Playstation 2's Tekken 5 for less than $20.  The exclusives on the Playstation make picking it up on PSX a better deal content-wise, but nothing is as authentic as playing it in the arcades.  While Tekken 3 doesn't stack up to other entries in the series, its easier difficulty makes it a great entry point for beginning players and since most of the moves carry over to future games, learning and mastering the title won't be a waste of time.