Tekken Tag Tournament

Tekken Tag Tournament (鉄拳タッグトーナメント Tekken Taggu Tōnamento?) (commonly abbreviated as Tekken Tag and TTT) is the fourth installment in the popular Tekken fighting game series. It, however, is not canonical to theTekken storyline. The game was originally available as an update kit for Tekken 3. Tekken Tag Tournament was originally released as an arcade game before it was ported to the PlayStation 2. The arcade version operated similarly, but ran on a 32 bit graphics engine like Tekken 3. It received upgraded graphics when it was ported to the PlayStation 2. It, along withTekken 4 and Soulcalibur II, was re-released in 2008 as a part of Namco Classic Fighter Collection. After 10 years, a sequel has been announced named Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

A remastered version of the game titled Tekken Tag Tournament HD was released for PlayStation 3 in November 2011, as part of a Tekken Hybrid disc which also includes the 3D movie, Tekken: Blood Vengeance, and a demo version ofTekken Tag Tournament 2.

Continuing the fighting mechanics from Tekken 3, Tekken Tag sees players battling in teams of two characters. At any point in the match, the player can hit a tag button to swap out with their other fighter, allowing the resting fighter to recover some lost health. The tag can be implimented in many ways, such as inbetween combos or utilising special throws. At times when a resting fighter's is flashing, that character can be tagged in to be given a temporary boost in strength. Unlike other tag games such as Capcom's Vs. series, players are defeated when only one of their fighters lose all their health, requiring players to be strategic about tagging their fighters. In the event of a timeout, the team with the most accumulative health remaining wins the round.

The game features over 35 characters that have previously appeared in Tekken 2 and Tekken 3. In addition, there is a boss character, Unknown, who is similar to Tekken 3's Mokujin in that she can randomly imitate any character's fighting style, albeit she is able to change her style any time during the fight. The PlayStation 2 version added enhanced graphics and various modes, including 1-on-1 mode, in which players only choose one fighter each, and Team Battle, where players choose up to eight battles and play with the tag rules, with each new character replacing the one that was defeated (the remaining fighter must fight on his/her own). Also featured is "Tekken Bowl" mode, a bowling minigame where each character has different attributes.

Tekken Tag Tournament, being a non-canon game, features no storyline. It is more of a compilation of the Tekken series giving fans the opportunity to play as almost every character in the series up to that point, including many of those that had apparently been missing in the main Tekken storyline. Of all the returning characters, Kazuya Mishima was the most heavily promoted, since he featured prominently on the game's cover art and promotional material, despite his absence from the previous entry in the Tekken series (he would return in Tekken 4). When Arcade mode is completed, a real-time ending is shown over the credits for the main character (i.e. the first character chosen when selecting the two fighters). The exception to this is Unknown's ending, which is a FMV.

Tekken Tag received positive reviews with critics. GameSpot giving it a 9.6 out of 10. It has an aggregate score of 85 on Metacritic. IGN gave it an 8.7 out of 10 praising its graphics and character moves. In 2007, IGN listed Tekken Tag Tournament as the 23rd best game on the PlayStation 2. As of 2008 PSM states Tekken Tag is regarded as the best installment in the series. In an article by GamePro Tekken Tag Tournament was praised for its visuals stating such things as, "The fighting backgrounds were also astounding-especially Eddy Gordo's stage where you could see individual blades of grass!" Tekken Tag has sold 4.63 million copies worldwide.