Another review of mine about an older fighting game. With Tekken 6 coming out in a few months I thought I would take a look at one of the highlights of my arcade trips to see how well Namco's beloved Tekken TAG has aged. 

The Tekken games have always been a favorite in American arcades and with the major success of Tekkn 3 in both the Arcades and on PSX back in 1998, Namco decided to up the ante a bit. Tekken TAG was to give players the one thing they wanted most: To see Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 go at it with a tag-team system.  It was a must-play in 2000, but do newer fighting fans need to seek it out?

The game is basically played like any 2D fighter you would have seen 10 years ago with the exception of the fights playing out in 2-on-2 affairs, with players switching out between their two chosen characters much like Marvel vs Capcom or Dead or Alive 2. The classic four-button layout from Tekken 1, 2 and 3 is still intact, with a fifth button dedicated to switching out. Unlike Tekken 3, Tekken TAG used different health values for the characters, making the gameplay slightly more unbalanced then it had been. Nevertheless, with the return of long-lost Tekken 2 characters and the entire Tekken 3 cast intact, there's still plenty of combinations of teams players can match together.

Graphically, the arcade version looks exactly like Tekken 3 due to this game being just an "upgrade" to the existing 32-bit engine. When ported to the PS2, Namco used the hardware to smooth out the graphics and speed things up just a bit (mostly affecting the speed in which you tag out). The result is the most enjoyable Tekken at it's time: A great port of a great game (too bad Tekken 3's port couldnt be on PS2).  Not to say both the graphics and speed are not dated by now, but compared to Tekken 3, Virtual Fighter 3 or even Street Fighter II, the PS2 version has aged better than one would guess. This remains one of the more fast-paced Tekkens to date, with Tekken 5 DR slightly edging it out.

If you have ever played Tekken 3, then you can guess what the sound effects are, as the same ones where reused from the previous game. It's completely forgivable since TAG was just a arcade update to Tekken 3, but after playing Tekken 3 for so long, it gets pretty old. The sound also sounds like those used in Tekken 5, so while they work, they just wouldn't hold anyone's attention. The music makes up for it, as Tekken 3's music score was dumped in favor of new songs. Fans of hard techno will feel right at home here, but some of the songs get really old fast. To make matters worse, the arcade music isn't in the PS2 version, so if you don't enjoy the remixes, you might hate Namco for a bit. If you never heard the first soundtrack, then you won't miss out and you'll enjoy it better than I did.

One of the biggest things a fighting game should get right is replayability and that brings me to my biggest gripe: This plays out almost like Tekken 3 did. If you never played Tekken 3, then you will enjoy this game pretty well, but if you were a long time Tekken fan, then you will see this as the same old game with some new stuff that does, in time, get really old (for example: The levels are new but are based off Tekken 3's). The game has the standard TAG, One on One, Survival and Time Attack modes, with the mini-game Namco is getting known for these days being the famous Tekken Bowl - a bowling game that is EXTREMELY good. The best fighting mode is simply the arcade's TAG mode. While you would think that One on One would simulate Tekken 3, the different HP values I mentioned before throw the mode to the unbalanced side of the court: Xioayu versus Jin or Devil just isnt fair at all. The rest are played out as you would have guessed. The next killjoy for replayability is the character roster. The biggest one at the time (and a large one today), TAG had 39 fighters to pick from. Except for Gon and Jack-1, EVERY Tekken fighter is here. The drawback is, though, that the Tekken 3 fighters were meant to completely replace those from Tekken 2. Unlike Tekken 5, where the old fighters were completely re-programmed, the fighters here fight just like they did in Tekken 2 with some new moves (mostly side-step moves) and fight a lot like their Tekken 3 counterparts. Bruce fights like Bryan, Wang fights like Julia, Lee fights like Law and so on. There is some difference, but not enough. Fans of Tekken 4 or 5 will also notice that the Tekken 3 fighters fight with WAY LESS moves and the same moves aren't used the same way. Since no new fighters were made for this game (the mimicking "Unkown" girl doesn't count), that leaves about 20 different styles to learn.

Overall, TAG is a really enjoyable fighter that gets fairly boring after a while. I feel it's probably one of the better Namco fighters of the era, but casual gamers may not see enough difference between it and the other Tekkens to warrant looking for. If you have never played Tekken before or just want to see how different it is from Tekken 5 a mere seven dollars from Gamestop is a hard deal to pass up. Just keep in mind it was printed in CD format (Blue back disk), so if you have an older system that no longer reads the format, then you might want to stick with Tekken 5.

GemuBaka Final Review Score: 3