In the past, the portable fighting game was little more than a novelty. With only a couple of exceptions, Game Boy and Game Gear fighting ports were dirty, ugly versions of their arcade and console counterparts, complete with poor control. But as handheld systems became more powerful, the quality of fighting games skyrocketed. Since then, weve seen games like Street Fighter Alpha on the Game Boy Color and SNK vs. Capcom for the NeoGeo Pocket Color, both of which proved that handhelds could handle a decent fighting game. The introduction of the Game Boy Advance gave another bump to the genre and gave us a close-enough-to-perfect rendition of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and now the handheld features a surprising port of Tekken 3 in the form of Tekken Advance. Namco may have had to cut a few corners to fit the 3D fighter onto Nintendos handheld, but the end product looks and feels enough like the original game to succeed.The first thing youll notice about Tekken Advance is its altered control scheme. The button configuration has been reduced to three buttons, one for kick, one for punch, and one for throws. Additionally, in the games tag mode, the fourth button is used for tagging out. This downsized control setting is a little awkward at first, but after a few rounds, it quickly becomes second nature. The main thing the setup forces you to compensate for is how you accomplish some of your moves. If you have a character like Paul, who originally was designed to do two different moves that involve hitting forward twice and hitting one of your two kick buttons, youll have to decide which move you want by either tapping forward twice and hitting kick or tapping forward twice, holding the second tap, and pressing kick. Its slightly confusing at first, but after an hour or so, you won even notice. The majority of the characters major moves are intact, though most of the move sets have been reduced quite a bit. For instance, there are no "hold back and hit two buttons" counters in the game.
Publisher : Namco
Developer : Namco
Genre : Action
Release Date : 01/28/2002
|
