Tekken Tag Tournament (1999)

Tekken Tag Tournament was a great, standalone game with no official ties to the main series in terms of story.

In Tag Tournament, you battle it out in one on one battles, or with the newly introduced tag battles. You can choose up to two characters and swap them out in a battle whenever you want. The other character can then heal a little bit of their health. This new mechanic is interesting and challenging, mainly because of the fact that you lose the battle if one of your characters reached zero HP. You can have a fully capable fighter left; you still lose. This mechanic requires strategy and knowing when to switch in time. If the timer runs out, the team with the most health left wins the match.

Tekken Tag Tournament features the classic arcade game mode, in which you battle through a series of opponents and then beat the boss. In this case, this is Unknown, some sort of dark witch which mimics the fighting style of other characters, much like Mokujin. The only difference is that she can change fighting styles throughout the battle itself, rather than every new round.

You can also play the one on one mode and the team battle, in which you apply the tag team mechanic, but this time, a character that is defeated, does not lose the match instantly. Instead, the remaining character fights the battle on his/her own until the next fight, in which the character is replaced by the next in line. Just like the original team battle mode, you choose eight characters from the start.

You also got a new mini game, Tekken Bowl. This is just bowling with Tekken characters, in which each of them got some sort of special mechanic and handling to throw the ball. It is fun when played the first time, but it gets a little repetitive and dull fast.

Because Tekken Tag Tournament act as a compilation of the first three games, almost every character ever featured so far, are playable in this game. They need to be unlocked first by beating the arcade mode with all the starting characters.

The graphics look nice and follow the same format as Tekken 3. They are however, just a little more polished and fluent when talking animations. The backgrounds are all nicely detailed and especially the end stage with Unknown looks fantastic.

The sound and music are almost the same as Tekken 3 and is nothing special anymore. I have to say that I did not like the music that much. It is a little blend and does nothing to enhance the experience.

The controls follow the same combos and schemes as Tekken 3 and feel responsive. The switching of characters goes fluently, and the feeling of control is just great when fighting.

The battles are intense and the adding of all the characters from the previous games, gives this game a complete feeling. It is a very good standalone title, just for the fun of playing Tekken.

My only issue with the game remained Eddy Gordo and his alter ego Tiger Jackson. Their low ground move sets are still too overpowered and breaks the game a little bit when using the infinite low feet spin combo.

In the end, I loved Tekken Tag Tournament. It is well rounded, offers a lot of characters with hours of play for unlocking them all and the new tag mechanics are greatly implemented and work perfectly.

Definitely recommend this game.

Definitely the most graphically superior release of the time, Tekken Tag Tournament brings the series to new heights by introducing a two on two fighting system with a more visually enhanced cinematic experience.

Gameplay remains much the same, fight your way to the boss and unlock new characters and movies.

Tekken Tag is accompanied by a new featured mini game, Tekken Bowling, albeit not a super exciting add on, but one that brings some new gameplay to the series. Play it the right way and you can unlock a secret character!

Tekken Tag Tournament is great new beginning for the franchise and lays some groundwork for sequels to come.

One of the earliest PS2 titles, and it shows. It feels rushed and lacking technical depth, but the love is there. The catalogue of fighters is vast and there's plenty of modes and stages to brawl out on. The main usp in Tekken Tag Tournament is that you pick two fighters of your choice that you can tag between during matches. I guess since it's an arcade port it makes more sense how this one is constructed, but you really could just play Tekken 4 instead.

[3] / [5]