Tekken 2: The Cusp of Greatness.

Back when the original Playstation first came out there weren't very many fighting games on it. I remember being the Blockbuster regional video game champ in my area, and using my 4 free video game rentals a month to rent the original Battle Arena Toshinden.

But back in the day, the Playstation was getting beaten down by the Sega Saturn and their fighter, Virtua Fighter. Then Tekken 2 started showing up in arcades, and it quickly divided the fans of 3D fighters into 2 camps, people who liked realism, and people who liked flash.

Since realism ended up being me getting thrown by Jeffrey a whole bunch in Virtua Fighter, I decided to go with "flash", and got into Tekken.

Tekken 2 started getting into something that Street Fighter only partially had back at around the same time, and that was an actual story. (They have since abandoned this idea, and Tekken 4 is just confusing, and obliterates any sort of past that the game had.)

Street Fighter, you just had Ken and Ryu story that stuck around, and the fact that they were always trying to beat up M. Bison.

Tekken 2 revolves around the King of the Iron Fist Tournament, held by Mishima Corp. Heihachi Mishima was the leader, but in Tekken 2, his son Kazuya takes over, and hosts the tourney again.

Along for the ride come a strange cast of characters, Baek, the Taekwondo master from Korea...who gets killed, Lei Wulong, the Hong Kong detective who looks like Jackie Chan, and Yoshimitsu, that funky looking alien guy with the sword.

My favorite character was the Wang.

The reason for this is because back then, as is the case now, I really sucked at fighting games. But Tekken 2 had a nifty little innovation that helped even out the score, the Unblockable Move.

By hitting a direction and a couple buttons, each player had their own devastating move that couldn't be blocked. If you were stupid enough to be in the way when it hit, it was your own damn fault, because the moves were slow as heck.

The Mighty Wang had a move that would hit you and knock you flying across the screen. All he had to do was step on you after that, and you had lost a full bar of health.

But for real players, this game offered a bit more. A good Tekken player would be able to unleash devastating combos to you and wouldn't even let you hit the ground.

This is one of the games that really started getting fighting games noticed for their incredibly intricate combinations and the stratification of players from the cream of the crop to the bottom feeders.

This game also had great CG endings. To help develop a little bit more of the character interactions, if you finished Story Mode, you'd get an ending movie. (and more than the "Gorbachev gets out to congratulate Zangeif"-style Street Fighter endings.)

For the most part these were really well done, and they've remained with the game down to the lastest volume in the series, Tekken 4.

For as good as the game was, it wasn't without its flaws. For one, the game is noticeably clunkier than Tobal 2, which was made around the same time, and Tobal 2 could run at 60 fps.

Another was that the background were pretty cheeseball, but hey, it was the 90s and you really couldn't ask for too much.

By the way, if you fight Paul, and you play on his stage, you'll notice the Twin Towers in the background, something I noticed after popping in the game to give it a look after a long hiatus.

So, while this wasn't the game that launched Tekken into the upper limits of the genre, it was the stepping stone that allowed for Tekken 3, the gem of the series to build upon and become truly marvelous as far as 3D fighters go.