The one true King.
Katsuhiro Harada surprises me with a question of his own.
I’m not used to my interviewees turning the tables on me.
I’m meant to be the one asking the questions!
“Do you know how old you were and what you were doing whenVirtua Fighterfirst came out?”
As I often am while playing fighting games, I’m thrown.
Sega’s influential Virtua Fighter released in arcades in 1993 before launching on the Saturn a year later.
I was 13 going on 14, I tell Harada, betraying my veteran status.
“Did it really take off or not so much?”
Yes, Tekken 2 round another friend’s house, this time in Dulwich.
Or did I see the chain throw first on telly?
GamesMaster, or maybe Bad Influence?
Here’s what I do know: I could not believe my eyes.
King ends his bone-crunching deconstruction of his hapless opponent with a flourish: the giant swing.
There’s no coming back from that.
All of a suddenStreet Fighter 2, with its fantastical fireballs and flaming fists, seemed childish.
Tekken was grown up, it was cool, and it was in my mate’s house.
No need to rinse my pocket money in the arcades of Streatham Hill’s famous post-school haunt, Megabowl.
Here, on PS1, my love affair with Tekken could run free.
But if you fancied another game a few months down the line, Tekken was your go-to.
Instead he worked on Tekken’s arcade versions, which always launched first before coming to consoles.
For Harada, Tekken was life.
I get the impression it still is, three decades later.
“It was huge,” he adds.
“And so it’s hard to think that Sony didn’t notice and, ‘Wow!
We would like to have our own kind of title.’
"
Sega, at the time, was doing it all.
Sony, on the other hand, had no arcade pedigree to draw upon.
Namco’s Ridge Racer and Tekken, then, became de facto PlayStation exclusives.
It was a match made in heaven, and Sony never looked back.
Tekken’s PS1 ports weren’t just technical marvels.
Namco even stuffed mini-games into the loading screens.
“It became a staple of what people expect from a consumer port,” Harada says.
Sony, smelling a hit exclusive, invested heavily in promoting Tekken in the west.
“People knew it as Sony’s Tekken,” Harada remembers.
“All the effort and funds Sony put into the market was just enormous.
So that really helped launch the popularity and recognisable aspect of Tekken around the world.”
Ryan Hart is perhaps the world’s most famous Tekken player.
Hart didn’t buy a PlayStation, he won one alongside Ridge Racer at a fighting game event.
He kept the PlayStation and sold other games he’d win at these sorts of events.
“I don’t think we digested it as a conversion,” Hart remembers.
“We were like, ‘Wow, we’ve got the arcade at home.’
It was so good that we didn’t even register that they’d ported this over.
“The genius marketing from Sony there is that you got everyone into pad games, right?”
“Because all the arcade guys were stick and buttons.
So it converted you from arcade to console in a very sort of natural, organic way.
As popular as Tekken was in arcades, PlayStation lifted the franchise up to new heights.
Harada estimates Tekken on PS1 had “easily” 10 times as many players than the arcade version.
So those unique circumstances really did launch the brand recognition for Tekken to another level.”
It all has to do with Eddy, the Brazilian capoeira fighter who was introduced in 1998’sTekken 3.
Got a few friends round for a drink or two and want to play PlayStation?
Does your friend love Bruce Lee?
Let them play as Marshall Law and mash the buttons.
Do they love Jackie Chan?
Give them Lei Wulong to play around with.
“It’s amazing what Eddie can produce just by mashing the kicks,” Hart says.
“Most characters have a unique string that you’re able to put together by mashing.
On Street Fighter, there’s nothing you might really produce by mashing that’s significant.”
He’s particularly proud of all the bonus content Namco managed to squeeze into the game.
What an absolute treasure it was.
This was peak Tekken.
Ryan Hart was one of the millions who played Tekken 3 on PS1.
He said he’s going to set up electrical sockets and everything so we could live in the garage.
He was really pissed.
He just wanted us out of the house.
It was quite a funny moment.
I definitely did play first-to-a-hundreds.
We just went crazy on Tekken 3.”
Talking to Harada and Hart, I’m transported back to a Dulwich living room.
Then, the sound of Tekken 3 loading up, the gut punch noise with each option select.
He was a purist who played with a fight stick to recreate that hardcore arcade experience.
This made moves that would otherwise require two face button presses at the same time easier to pull off.
Too easy, my friend argued.
As my win streak increased so did his anger intensify.
It’s on PlayStation, I’d say with a smirk.
I can play Tekken whatever way I want.
And so I did.
Day after day after day.
