Get ready for the next battle!

 Hey there~

I promised two articles and here's the second one!

This is gonna take a bit longer than expected, since the game series we're gonna talk about today is none other than the Bandai Namco's most famous fighting series: Tekken!

Also, it took me quite a while to find all this information, so please be gentle.

Without further ado, let's get started~

Believe me when I say "it'll take a bit longer than expected", because this famous fighting franchise started releasing its original trilogy from 1994 to 1997 and kept going until today, so there's plenty to cover.

As mentioned a few words back, the original Tekken trilogy (Tekken 1, 2 & 3) released from 1994 to 1997, soon after the debut of tag-teamed oriented games followed, releasing a couple years later, that takes us to 1999 until 2004 and it consisted of another trilogy, Tekken Tag Tournament, Tekken 4 & 5. 

Note: although, TTT had nothing to do with the actual lore of the original game, we still love a good fighting tag game and moreover this one since it brought a lot of new technology and graphics to the fighting games genre.

The next generation to follow up were released on 2005 until present, where the entertainment company switched to multiplatform - Sony's PlayStation which was the original platform to play the games, Microsoft's Xbox & Windows for PC and as far as I'm concerned, Apple's Mac - from Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, Tekken 6, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Tekken 7 chronologically and we long await the rumored release of Tekken 8 sometime between mid 2023 and early 2024.

But the latter, of course, is pure speculation, since Bandai Namco hasn't officially announced anything yet.

A couple years ago, I remember opening an article about which game might follow the series and the journalist stated "Bandai Namco's next Tekken game could be Tekken 8 or Tekken Tag Tournament 3" because we haven't had a TTT since 2011, when the 2nd TTT released.

Well, let me assure you, because of Sony's "teaser" of the game on September 2022 in a State of Play broadcast, today we can surely say the next game is Tekken 8.

I think now is the perfect time to talk about my experience with the Tekken franchise.

As you already know, I never was the player. I was always the viewer and as the third person in the room, I wasn't as much engaged with the story of the game or the characters etc. as the gamer was, that being my father or older brother.

But I was always on the lookout for things they might have missed during a stage / level.

And then...Tekken has finally arrived in our collection of many games. It was Tekken Tag Tournament for PlayStation 2 and I was SO excited, because it gave me the opportunity to play along with my father and older brother. Or should I say, against two competitive gamers.

They caught up really quickly, but I remember spending days to become a better fighter...and it gave off very well after years went by.

To be honest, we weren't the type of hardcore gamers that would buy each and every game out there, so we really loved and appreciated Tag Tournament, but never bought the next - or previous - games and right around when PlayStation 3's Tekken 6 released is when we bought Tekken 5 for the PS2.

We didn't even buy a PS3 and it took us 2 years to buy Tekken 5, because we were either buying some other games or were saving for the newest console..which was quite expensive at the time for high schoolers with limited allowance.

So, we REALLY and ABSOLUTELY loved and appreciated our most favorite fighting game.

And even when we bought PlayStation 3 we never bothered buying other Tekken games, because we already had it in with the best Tekken games released - according to our tastes.

Personal opinion: Tekken 6 was much more unstable than its predecessors and I had the opportunity to play the game on a friend's PS3. The game was so erratic, that had lagged the console a couple times. I remember there were also times that the PlayStation's optical laser couldn't even read the disc...and the disc was pretty much unharmed.

I've also tried to play Tekken 7 on that same friend's new PS4 when they got it and I say tried, because it was a bit difficult for me to keep up with so many characters and buttons and details on a lore basis.

But--

I really love the overall experience of this franchise, to me it's one of the most significant fighting games, because it brought so many new things into the gaming industry, such as motion captured 3D fighters, which I found out that it was the IT thing back in the late '90s.

Fun fact about the Tekken franchise is that the first game of the series was actually a test for the arcade halls in Japan back in 1994 and Bandai Namco wanted the game to be playable on Sega platforms, but instead got a better agreement with Sony's PlayStation.

And now for the family dra-- err, I mean, Tekken lore.

Heihachi Mishima gives a hard time to his son, Kazuya and fights him every time in order to make him "stronger", so one day he'll take over the Mishima Zaibatsu. They fight and Kazuya loses, so Heihachi drops him off the edge of a cliff.

BUT Kazuya survives the fall and vows revenge.

20 years later, Heihachi has just announced the Iron Fist Tournament and whoever wins gets the title of King of the Iron Fist Tournament, some enormous amount of money and the right to be the Mishima Zaibatsu owner.

Kazuya finds this the perfect chance to fight his father and settle this for good.

He achieves revenge as he has wished and we can't forget that creepy smile he gave the camera when he finally dropped his father off the same cliff that his father dropped him 20 years ago.

I'll just leave it here with the lore, because it's practically impossible to write about it, since the game first released back in mid '90s.

There are so many characters involved in the story that after a while you just can't keep up with it.

BUT I will talk about a couple ups and downs in the Mishima family, those being Kazuya actually has a son, named Jin Kazama who was brought up by his mother, Jun Kazama and she taught him the Kazama fighting style.

Jin learns about the Second Iron Fist Tournament and vows revenge towards his father, who has abandoned Jin and his mother.

As you can tell, the Mishima Zaibatsu goes from father to son and / or vice versa at the end of every Story Mode game and a lot of other things about the Mishima family are revealed towards the end of eras.

Tekken 7 has left the story with Heihachi being the CEO, but he gets killed vengefully by his son, making the current CEO of the Mishima Zaibatsu unknown.

Between Tekken 2 and Tekken 7 a lot have happened, however like I said it's impossible to keep up, for instance, there's an Ogre in the game and is a playable character, there's also Alex who is a dinosaur and a kangaroo named Roger, who becomes a father at some point. 

There's also Kuma, a literal grizzly, that Heihachi brought from the jungle back when he went training before all of this happened, he taught Kuma the Mishima fighting style and how to understand Japanese. 

See? But I won't leave you hanging!

If you really want to know the lore of the game, you can click here!

Anyway, I think that's about it!

What do you think of this franchise?

Are you ready for the next battle?

I know I can't wait!

Write your comment below and I'll be sure to follow up~

Sincerely yours~