The Best PlayStation Game Every Year 1994 - 2024
30. 1995 - Tekken
Whilst Tekken isn’t the first 3D fighter, it’s easily the game of its era that made the biggest waves. Most importantly, Namco got the concept into living rooms whilst it was fresh. Yes, Virtua Fighter was the first widespread 3D fighter in arcades, but its Sega Saturn port was overshadowed by Tekken’s arrival on the PlayStation six months later. Namco and Sony's partnership had done the same for fighting that it had previously for racing.
But Tekken didn’t merely blow the fighting genre outwards into a new dimension, it built itself around the new opportunities this afforded. The combat of the game was intuitive and inventive, mapping a limb to each of the four face buttons. There were no special moves, instead players had to rely on their ability to weave attacks together.
It also used the jump to 3D gaming to move story-telling in fighting games forward with each character having their own Arcade Mode ending cinematic. By today’s standards, they’re frankly hilariously bad but they helped to set the groundwork for Tekken’s beloved character roster.
In general, as with many early 3D games, it looks quaint now but at the time it was jawdropping to have access to a game that looked and moved like this at home. Tekken was the first PlayStation game to sell a million units and it was surely a contributing factor for many of those people to buy the system too.