play station official magazine

060

THE OPM INTERVIEW

MiddleThe game’s designed to encourage you to knock your opponent out.

LeftHarada provided Yoshimitsu’s original voice.RightAlas, poor Yoshi...

was perceived as something truly revolutionary that captured the

imagination of not only gamers but also the wider public. It was the

representation of the “real world” in graphics form, something realistic

and palpable even for someone who did not have any experience playing

games. From that point onwards, the game being fun was not enough

any more, it also had to have cutting-edge graphics to capture the

attention of people.

Regarding Tekken 3, the game only focused on two characters at a time,

which enabled us to push the graphical fidelity even further and add

realistic details more so than other games could at the time. I believe that

franchise achieve mainstream success. We

are talking about 4.3 million units sold in the

first few months of release, which grew into 8.3

million units sold in total by the end.

OPM: Why was Tekken 3 the entry point to the

series for a great deal of players?

KH: I think that the answer to the question is

very complex because it was the result of a

perfect storm of various factors.

One of the reasons was that in the minds

of many gamers, Tekken 3 was perceived as

the “newest 3D fighting game on the market”

even before it was released on the PlayStation.

This was due to the fact that the game’s

arcade version had already been released to

critical acclaim and was continuously growing

in popularity.

Another reason for its success, the game was

a benchmark that pushed the envelope on what

was possible on the PlayStation in terms of

graphics and loading speed. In the early ’90s

videogame industry, Tekken 3 was on the

cutting edge.

Also it is important to remember that

although it is very common today, at that time

it was rare for a fighting game to have many

game modes. Part of Tekken 3’s appeal was that

it offered a wide variety of game modes (such

as the Story mode, Tekken Ball, etc). And

finally, one of the main reasons why people see

this entry as the beginning of the series is

because the characters and gameplay were

completely renewed and revamped to become

the basis of the iconic experience that fans of

the series love today.

OPM: What do you think was so important

about PS1 for fighting games of the era?

KH: As technology continued to advance, proper

arcade-to-console ports were being made

possible, which was very impressive at the time,

but what the PS1 brought was something

completely new. At the time, polygon-based 3D

THERE’S A LOT

LESS HAND-

HOLDING FOR THE

PLAYERS – IT’S A

MUCH MORE

GAMEPLAY-DRIVEN

EXPERIENCE.

Harada’s not afraid to

try new things, to give

fans what “they didn’t

even know they wanted.”