Previous time I had delivered with a brief but comprehensive overview of the fangame Sonic Robo Blast 2, a game that had its roots from the 90s and evoked a retro feeling of sorts. However, today I'll take a look at an actual retro classic and one of the cornerstones of a certain fighting game franchise: Tekken 2.
Now if you happen to be familiar with more recent Tekken games, it can be summoed up as the following: Tekken 1 is the alpha/beta foundation of Tekken as we know it, albeit very limited. On the other hand, Tekken 3 would give the franchise its trademark smoothness, movement options and overall quality of the games, essentially being the key starting point for the franchise as one of the best fighting games for the Sony Playstation. While Tekken 2 sort of sits in the shadow of the more acclaimed Tekken 3 nowadays, it was a big game when it released for arcade and Playstation owners.
This sequel brought back pretty much everyone from the previous game, and added some few newcomers. However, this game would feel more like a completed game than Tekken 1 with the increased amount of detail given to the presentation, movesets, and overall gameplay tweaks. Older characters (specially the unlockable characters, which mostly used to be clones in the first game) were given a handful of new tricks, and newcomers had their own share of cool moves.
While the CGI cutscenes still are early CGI from the 90s, they still are an improvement to the first game cutscenes, with a memorable intro, and endings with their own music (as well as unlockable characters now having endings). Speaking of presentation, this game (just like its predecessor) would offer both an Arranged soundtrack that remixed the original arcade version music, and the Original soundtrack which originally played through the arcade board sound chip.
The game does have a fair share of amounts considering the time it was released (and specially when compared to recent fighting games where there's an apalling lack of single-player modes); Arcade lets you play through several battles with any setting changes, Time Attack is similar to the Arcade but most settings are locked to default (but you can get times at the saved Ranking), and Survival has you play through endless amount of battles with a never completely refilling lifebar until you lose. One particularly special mode though? Team Battle.
Here you could choose from 1 to 8 characters into a team, and then pit them against another team; if you were playing with someone else then the team numbers could be different (say, 1v8 if you really were up to that), and it was a particularly fun distraction that was kept in most Tekken games afterwards (except Tekken 7, sadly). On the topic of fun, there were some few easter eggs that you could activate by holding certain buttons before a fight, like having your character be a big head with a higher-pitched voice.
Overall, while it feels more rigid than Tekken 3 and onwards, it still has a fair amount of moves that would be kept in the series, like the Mishima's Wind God Fist (uppercut), Paul's Deathfist and so on. It is a fun game to revisit nowadays and specially aged better than Tekken 1, along with having a fair amount of unlockable characters (and endings) if you want something to try completing. And with the advent of NullDC BEAR, it is possible to play online through netplay, a fact that has been acknowledged by fans of the classic Tekken games.
All screenshots provided by myself, screenshots taken with Duckstation emulator.