You might think, given that I like Street Fighter II and its derivatives so much that it would be a no-brainer that I would like the 3D fighting games too, but it turns out that I’m pretty terrible at them. And I think the reason is that I just have too much to worry about trying to maneuver my guy in 3D space. Take Tekken Tag for example, you have two punches, two kicks, a block, and can move around a bit forward and backward as well as in and out of the background. And it moves a little slower, which should be a good thing.
Most fighting games have some kind of flimsy story as the explanation for the characters fighting each other, but if this one does, then I wasn’t able to divine it. It appears that this game was just an excuse to have a big lineup of lots of Tekken characters just slugging it out because that’s what they do, and I can respect that. But this time they do it in teams of two, and you can switch them up at any time
Now, I’m fully willing to admit that I’m not very good at these kinds of games because I don’t play them enough to get good at them. And the main reason I don’t play them is because of what happened at one particular arcade one Saturday night.
I, being a complete newbie to the game, was just kind of jacking around with it, learning the ropes and trying to feel my way around. Then some jackass comes up who’s apparently pretty skilled at the game and throws money into the machine (without asking me if I minded, of course). So he picks his guys, I pick my guys and we start fighting. Round one ends with me getting a pretty savage beatdown, but that’s OK. I can take a loss to a better player. Round two started and then WHAM! He hits me with some kind of move that I had never seen before (I was completely new, remember?) that completely KO’d me in one hit. I was a little upset and probably yelled a little. “There’s a move in this game that KO’s your opponent in one hit? That seems a little unfair.” “Only if you’re dumb enough to get hit with it,” he answered. Right then, I decided that if the game had moves that unbalanced in it, then it was a game I didn’t need to be playing, especially in an arcade where, if I’m hit by said moves, I blow through my $0.75 in less than two minutes, including time at the character select screen. And I’m no economist, but that doesn’t seem like the best use of my dollars.