came out in 2001, and on my PS2 hooked up to my old tv it looks stunning, just as good as the best looking games of this console generation
the intro cinematic with the characters on the street and lee driving made my jaw drop the clarity was so sharp on my old ass tv
It’s a 2000 launch title and shit is still peak. Namco knew how to make some graphics during 6th gen
Yea I'm still impressed by how good soul calibur 2 on gamecube looks
Those intro cinematics are often outsourced to CG companies. Don't know if that's the case with TTT though
You can literally follow and see the progression of Namco's CG team from 1994 to 2004. It's quite amazing.
Tag looks amazing on PS2 but DOA3 upped the ante
While it sucked that 6th gen didn’t have much for 2D fighters post Dreamcast. The plus is that 3D fighters were system showcases. The PS2 especially
DOA games still look incredible on series x today and the only thing it changed was it upped the resolution.
Stellar game.
>Stellar game
The core gameplay of DOA is far from "stellar". Theres a reason why it never got popular. Same with virtua fighter
Correct. It's far from stellar because it's the best of the best in the genre, along with VF
VF is a boring mashfest and DOA is a boring mashfest but with oversized breasts
VF is anything but a mashfest...
If you try that, you're getting your butt handed to you. I love Tekken, but you can mash more on that than VF.
DoA can be a little mashey though if you are new.
>DOA games still look incredible on series x today
DOA3 got backwards compatibility? I figured the Aerosmith track kept it in limbo.
>Tag looks amazing on PS2
LOL, the game is full of 2d jpg backgrounds instead of actual modeling at a time when there were other fighting games with full 3d environments.
Lightning and colors are better than late PS2 games tho, think of it like REmake vs RE4
>2d jpg backgrounds
And what's wrong with that?
The most mindblowing shit in the world to me was learning in the late 2000s how Tekken Tag Tournament looked in arcades. Got DAMN.
Tekken Tag was a Tekken 3 modifier. The only reason it wasn’t on PS1 is because the console couldn’t handle the switching
I think TTT PS2 is the last time the series had realistic looking proportions. From T4 onwards the guys looked like roided up Unreal Engine/Gears characters and the girls cartoony with big hands or broad shoulders. I have the same issue with Soul Calibur after 2. Did Namco just fire most of their talented character modelers at some point during 6th gen?
Yeah, I only ever saw one TTT arcade cab back in the day, so the graphics didn't really register. Only much later did I find out that the PS2 version was so graphically superior. I'm actually a bit surprised that Namco didn't release a modified/updated version of the PS2 game for the Namco 246.
They sound quite a bit different too. Tag arcade uses sample based tracked music off the chip, while the PS2 version streams high quality remixes of them.
I was so attuned to TTT arcade from playing it for hundreds of hours I strongly y disliked how TTT PS2 looked because a few models like hwoarang were wonky
Soul Calibur looked better.
I remember the PlayStation 2 Soul Calibur looking like shit compared to both the game's peers and other versions of the game itself. Something about the resolution or aliasing was fricked up.
That was SC2 and you would be right about that. The GameCube and Xbox handled the weapon effects better and had better load times.
But that's weird because the system that the arcade version ran on used the exact same CPU and GPU as PS2. You'd think that'd be the main development platform, but they also overlooked some other things. For instance, moves that make use of low-right diagonal are unreasonably difficult to execute using a genuine DualShock 2 D-pad with analog input (at least the specific revision I have). The game almost always registers that diagonal as either down or right on its own. You have to press it so hard that it becomes uncomfortable. Now that I play with an Xbox Series controller on my PS2 using Blueretro, that problem has disappeared. No wonder the Gamecube version sold better when PS2 is arguably the worst version of the game.
And then they make SC III a PS2 exclusive for some inexplicable reason (I thought about it long and hard and I couldn't come up with any rational justification other than Sony simply bribed them). I've also heard rumors on this website that Xbox and Gamecube versions were in the works but got canceled and people working on those ports didn't know until that interview where Yotoriyama confirmed the game as a PS2 exclusive and denied any guest characters being present. Oh, but that diagonal problem got fixed in SC III. The game has other bugs, but it also looks way better than SC II on PS2.
Soul calibur looks worse than soul edge so no. Keep dreaming.
Weirdly I thought PS2 graphics got worse as time went on.
because late 6th gen games are 7th gen lite with all the piss filter and bloom like NFS MW
This also there was shit tonnes of shovelware being dumped in the last year or so before PS3 launched as Devs were already concentrating on their PS3 launch titles with the pre release dev machines they'd have already been given.
Yeah, it seems like the first three years of the PS2 was when it definitely had an identity for itself, but from 2004 things start to look a little less striking.
It was also because things were starting to become ported to it or considered for multiplatform later on rather than it being the lead/exclusive, especially for westslop. This often meant it wouldn't use it's strengths as well, or the games were cut down to fit. Also more complex visuals were a bit overly ambitious both for its shitvision output. MGS2 is a better looking game than MGS3, until HD enters the equation.
I don't think that's true. SoulCalibur III on PS2 looks better than SoulCalibur II on PS2 in my opinion. Many character models in II look awkward, IMO.
Tekken 2 (PS1) and Tag (PS2) are still the greatest and best looking Tekkens, even to this day.
The PS2 version still the skybox fake 3D thing from the PS1 days so all the graphics went into the characters and it paid off
Fighting Game Anniversaries:
"23 years ago today, Tekken Tag Tournament was released on the PlayStation 2 at NA as one of the system's launch titles in the region. It was developed and published by Namco".
Katsuhiro Harada:
"At the time, TEKKEN3 was finished and I was working on a prototype of "4" on a phantom board called System15 when management ordered me to release 3.5 within six months. I said it as a joke at that moment, and the project was TAG. The project took 5 minutes to plan and only 2 months to develop (arcade version). The sales manager said, "This kind of game won't sell," but it sold very well and the cost was low, so the company made a considerable profit.
The port to the console version had to be done in time for the launch of the PS2 due to the lack of memory on the PSX.
The PS2's specs at the time had too much room for drawing processing, and the 3D modelers were baffled by the number of polygons, which was even more than enough to place many mobs in the battle stages, so they elaborately created even the teeth in the characters' mouths. As a result, characters at that time rarely opened their mouths, and the elaborate teeth modeling did not make much sense because of the resolution problem.
Still, there was plenty of room for rendering processing, so I wasted a lot of time layering semi-transparency on the ground smoke to make it look nice...those were good times".
https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/1717714811843428799
Oh no, a videogame developer referenced PSX...
now I can't sleep
Not a bad game but it honestly felt underwhelming after all the extra stuff included in Tekken 3. I never really liked tag fighting games anyway though, so not for me. I didn't get pulled back in until Tekken 5.
tag 1 is so cool. the ogre stage is still my favorite stage in fighting games ever.
I remember when Tekken 4 came out thinking man this doesn't look nearly as good as tekken tag.
Tekken 4 looked way and played way better my melatonin enriched hombre.
Looked way better for sure. Walls and objects in the field I’m still mixed about.
Tekken 4 had better 3D movement than any Tekken game but possibly to its detriment.
The game became rushdown and poke-heavy, much more like Soul Calibur.
Actually I think the tag 1 ps2 models had more polygons than T4 models.
It was a PS2 system seller to the point that Hori made custom TTT arcade sticks ( I have one)
I have the Tekken 3 and Tekken 4 ones.
It doesn't, it looks the rushed shit that it was.
Because it's a fighting game so there's less shit that needs to be rendered.
"Talk of the town! Memories of Tekken Tag Tournament
Matsui: Let's jump forward to Tekken Tag Tournament. This one came out in 1999.
Harada So, Tag… at the time, arcades were in a pinch, so there were discussions about whether we might somehow be able to rush out a new game. That's when we came up with the plan for 'Tekken 3.5' — not '4', which wouldn't be ready in time, as we only had around 3 months to make the game. So, I came up with the concept for Tag in five minutes: I knew from working on Tekken 3 that we'd be able to fit another two characters into RAM, so five minutes later, bam, idea! Six hours later, I'd written the spec documents! It was really that simple. Now that I'm thinking about it, we had some people from Gamest look it over and add their two cents. The ability to remove the opponent's red health [via tag combo] was an idea suggested by Gamest.
Matsui: There are a lot of things to talk about… one thing that comes to mind is that this was the era when people were beginnging to talk about how strong Korea was at Tekken.
Harada: Tekken's popularity in Korea was crazy — it was like 'Are you a Starcraft player, or a Tekken player?' Speaking of Korea, it seems that the players over there didn't understand the meaning of the 'chicken mark', and I remember hearing, 'there's this symbol… it seems to appear for really strong players, but it'll sometimes just randomly disappear, what's up with that?'
(everybody laughs)
Bando: How did that work?
Harada: Points are silently built up when the player does things like repeating the same move or performing evasive actions, and when they cross a certain point threshold, they gain the chicken mark. We assigned point values to moves that were especially strong in Tekken 3, so if you use those moves a lot, you'll get marked very quickly.
(everyone): I had no idea… mystery solved!
Harada: If you do Lee's Machine Gun Kick a few times in a row, you'll get marked right away (laughs)".
"Bando: It was right around this time when official maker-sponsored tournaments started to appear. I took part in the tournament finals held in Hakodate as a representative of Kansai, and for some strange reason, there was some sort of golf competition tied into the Tekken tournament, and the people playing in the golf event were able to enter the Tekken tournament. Isn't that wild? Even though these were nationals, there were old dudes there who'd clearly never played Tekken before (laughs) What's more, when I turned up to the tournament, Shibuya-san was there… this guy made the effort to pay a hefty transportation fee to the venue and, by greasing a few palms, was somehow afforded the right to participate in the tournament. Seriously! (laughs)
Shibuya: Oh yeah, that rings a bell! That sounds about right. (laughs)
Matsui: I was still active with tournaments and events during this era. When we held a kumite, we drew around 200 people".
"Tekken – 2010 Roundtable Interview":
https://shmuplations.com/tekken/
Namco was really good at that. They were close enough with Sony that I think they must have had input on the development of the console, they're just too good
Tag 1's soundtrack is fascinating to me because it's objectively kind of awful. The songs in both ARC and PS2 are mixed terribly, there's all these weird decisions like constant vocoder, loud as frick drum kits and buzzy square wave synthesizers. But then you get around to listening to it on a hi-fi setup and it's actually really fricking awesome.
Yoshimitsu's theme for instance reminds me of Ridge Racer V which tried to have more minimal techno instead of the typical rave/fusion stuff. Ogre's theme is a mix between big beat and trip hop. Lei's theme is the most "2000" sounding in my opinion. Eddy's theme is fricking awesome, perfect example of tribal trance. Also is it just me or does Nina's theme kind of sound like a very very early version of what we'd get in T7 / T8? That sort of very compressed techno which sounds like nothing but still knows how to keep your attention.
Bed drum~
Bedroom~
Drum drum~
Rooooooooom~
I forget his name, but one of the composers for TTT had a reputation for being a cheeky thing, intentionally trying to push musical boundaries in the games he would work on. In time this got him demoted from composer to sound engineer.
>because it's objectively kind of awful
nah. you're moronic. this whole "i'm insecure as frick, so i need to push my opinions as "objective" so that people take me seriously" mentality needa to die