Tekken 3 (Japan, TET1/VER.A) - MAME machine

Arcade Video game published 27 years ago:

Tekken 3 © 1997 Namco.

The world's 19 toughest fighters enter The King of Iron Fist Tournament 3, in order to defeat Heihachi, and Ogre, who has taken the souls of many of the world's greatest fighters to adopt its own fighting style. Every character has his own ambition of winning the tournament. A fully 3-D game with one on one concept of fighting.

TECHNICAL
Namco System 12 hardware
Game ID: TET

Main CPU: Sony CXD8661R (@ 100 MHz), Hitachi H8/3002 (@ 16.9344 MHz)
Sound Chips: Namco C352 (@ 25.4016 MHz)

Players: 2
Control: 8-way joystick
Buttons: 6

TRIVIA
Tekken 3 was released in March 1997 (even if the title screen says 1996).

The title of this game translates from Japanese as 'Iron Fist 3'.

This is the first Tekken game which has 3-D backgrounds. Namco's Tekken 3 production team used one of the most advanced motion capture apparatus and facilities at its time for the highly life-like movements, moves, actions and reactions of the 3-D characters. They also used some of the very famous and active personalities of different martial arts styles from all over the world, like, for Eddy Gordo's Capoeira style of fight they got the services of Master Marcelo Pereira of 'Capoeira Mandinga'. And for Hwoarang's Taekwondo style of fight they got the services of Hwang Su-Il of 'Japan International Taekon-do Federation, and several other martial arts institutes.

Namco's production team motion captured each and every move to create such an in depth game, that was also one of the most higly anticipated fighting game for the last few years. After Tekken 3, its followers like Tekken Tag, Tekken 4 and Tekken 5 got more and more depth, life-like impression, and the element of giving more fun (and addictiveness to its players).

The word Tournament on the 'You are the Champion!' background is mis-spelled in the Japanese version as 'Tounament'.

Most of the characters like Jin, Law, Julia are the children of the characters from the first Tekken games.

The Lei Wulong music theme was certainly inspired by East 17's song: Steam (1994).

In the Sound FX there is the announcer voice for Jun Kazama, Kazuya Mishima and Sake meaning these characters could have been in the game but weren't added to the final version.

There are 21 different characters, but Anna, Tiger and Panda play identical to Nina, Eddy and Kuma respectively. In total, excluding Anna, Tiger, Panda and Mokujin, there are 17 characters with different moves.

With a cheat enabled sometimes you can face Jun and a new character, Sake (pronounced Shaa-Ke). In fact Jun has a graphic for the VS. screen and a name tag for the energy bar. Uses Nina's body and Jin's moves Sake only has a name tag. Uses Yoshimitsu's body and Jin's moves, and a blank VS. picture. You can play with them with the code enabled. You'll have to find the value which the cpu uses to select your character. The value for Jun is 17 in Hex that will be (11). After you've played with Jun or Sake in the game you can see Jun and Sake in the Percentage Screens which appear in the game randomly when nobody is playing. Jun has got her Percentage Page's thumbnail but sake uses Paul's thumbnail. In the same way, after you've played with Jun and/or Sake you can see them in the EDS screen from the Dip-Switch menu. It looks like Namco was putting Jun and Sake but then stopped working on them for some purposes (explained below):
1) According to the story Jun gets killed by Ogre (the god of fight). So if they would've put her they couldn't put Jin in the game as he probably looks of the same age of his mother. That doesn't apply to TekkenTag which has both Jin and his mother Jun, because TekkenTag does not have any storyline and the idea is to put all the characters from previous games (some of them were even dead).
2) Sake was rather populating the game as the game had already got 20 characters at that time. Namco's production team probably didn't had much time to re-do the whole code for character selection so they buried the two raw characters in an as-is condition forever...

A cameo of this game seen is in the 2000 movie 'Dude, Where's My Car?'. A "Tekken 3" cabinet can be briefly shown in the arcade scene.

Wonder Spirits released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Tekken 3 arcade soundtrack 001 ex - WSCAX-10001) on 18/07/1997.

UPDATES
Note: Test Mode build dates are displayed in the game's internal memory but not shown on screen.

TET1/VER.A (Japan)
TET2/VER.A (World)
TET3/VER.A (US)

• Build date: 17:47:51, MAR 9 1997
• Build date: 07:56:12, MAR 10 1997 (Test Mode)

TET2/VER.B (World)

• Build date: 16:36:09, MAR 12 1997
• Build date: 01:58:34, MAR 25 1997 (Test Mode)

TET2/VER.C (World)

• Build date: 12:17:43, APR 4 1997
• Build date: 13:14:13, APR 4 1997 (Test Mode)

TET2/VER.D (World)
TET3/VER.D (US)

• Build date: 15:19:09, APR 17 1997
• Build date: 19:27:52, APR 24 1997 (Test Mode)

TET1/VER.E1 (Japan)
TET2/VER.E1 (World)

• Build date: 12:18:11, MAY 15 1997
• Build date: 18:00:10, JUN 4 1997 (Test Mode)

TIPS AND TRICKS
When a Time Release character is about to become selectable the vs. screen before a demo fight will say "Coming Soon" and display a picture of the hidden character.

• Play as Anna Williams: Highlight Nina on the character selection screen and press Start. Anna plays identical to Nina. Anna is only available after Bryan is unlocked from Time Release.
• Play as Tiger: Highlight Eddy at the character selection screen and press the Start button. Tiger plays identical to Eddy. This option is only available after Ogre 2 (aka True Ogre) is unlocked from Time Release.
• Special Outfits: There are three characters that can have an additional outfit by pressing Start to select them instead of a punch or kick button, these are: Jin, Law and Xiaoyu. Law's third outfit is selectable from the start but Jin and Xiaoyu's school outfits can only be selected after Mokujin is unlocked from Time Release.
• Fight Jin on Stage 9: If you start a game with Heihachi you will fight Jin on Stage 9 instead, regardless if you continue and choose another character.

SERIES

• Tekken (1994, ARC)
• Tekken 2 (1995, ARC)
• Tekken 3 (1997, ARC)
• Tekken Tag Tournament (1999, ARC)
• Tekken Tag Tournament Turbo (1999, ARC)
• Tekken 4 (2001, ARC)
• Tekken Advance [Model AGB-ATKJ-JPN] (2001, GBA)
• Tekken 5 (2004, ARC)
• Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection (2005, ARC)
• Tekken 6 (2007, ARC)
• Tekken 6 - Bloodline Rebellion (2008, ARC)
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (2011, ARC)
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Unlimited (2012, ARC)
• Tekken 3D - Prime Edition [Model CTR-ATKJ-JPN] (2012, 3DS)
• Tekken 7 (2015, ARC)
• Tekken 7 Fated Retribution (2016, ARC)
• Tekken 7 Fated Retribution - Round 2 (2019, ARC)

STAFF
Directors: Masamichi Abe, Yutaka Kounoe
Game directors: Masahiro Komoto, Katsuhiro Harada
Motion director: Hiroaki Yotoriyama
Motion manager: Masataka Ishiguro
Visual director: Yoshinari Mizushima
Main programmer: Masanori Yamada
Game programmer: Naoki Ito
System programmer: Yoshihito Saito
I/O programmer: Tetsuya Funatsu
Led programmer: Toshiharu Hijiya
Stage & Effect programmers: Yoshiyuki onda, Hajime Furusawa, Hajime Harima
Enemy & Camera programmer: Junichi Sakai
Test mode programmer: Kiyoshi Minami
Tool support: Koji Yamaguchi
Motion designers: Yukie Misaki, Yoshihisa Yaguchi, Nobuko Nimura, Fuminori Tsuchiya, Tomoe Yamashita, Ryouchi Ban, Tomoko Tomita, Sachiko Inoue, Isamu Sawada, Kazuo Takahashi, Jin Okubo, Naotake Hirata
Character model designers: Takuji Kawano, Kazuaki Fujimoto, Akira Nakajima, Daisuke Tsushima
Led designer: Taro Okamoto
Stage designers: Masashi Kubo, Tatsuya Matsue, Yasunori Yanagawa, Miki Maemori, Hitomi Yotoriyama, Yuko Mizoguchi
Visual designer: Yukiko Yokoo
Logo designer: Hideaki ito
Music composers: Nobuyoshi Sano (Sanodg), Keiichi Okabe (B.K.O)
Sound effect & Voice editor: Etsuo Ishii
Opening movie director: Hiroshi Kuwabara
Opening movie staff: Takeya Inokuchi, Eishu Takamura, Yukiharu Taniguchi
Coordinate support: Ryouzi Ichikari, Satoshi Masukawa, Tetsuya Akatsuka, Ryo Sakamoto, Akiya Ikeda, Tatkuzi Kanayama, Tsuyoshi Kiuchi, Kazuhisa Takahashi, Norikatsu Yoshikawa, Makoto Kusano, Yusuke Morita, Atsushi Koyama, Miho anaka, Naoyuki Kondou
Motion capture tech. team: Takayasu Yanagihara, Hiroshi Numakami, Satoshi Yamaguchi, Yasumichi oonishi
Motion actors: Minoru Suzuki and Osami Shibuya of 'World Pancrase Create Inc.', Master.Marcelo Pereira of 'Capoeira Mandinga, Barkeley-California-USA', Hwang Su-Il of 'Japan International Taekon-do Federation', Yoshinori Aoki, Kenichiro Tamayori, Toshiyuki Miyajima
Opening movie effects: Image
Camera motion director: Koh Onda
Camera motion designers: Kanako Doi, Kazuki Aizawa, Takashi Iwaizumi
Hardware support: Tohru Ogawa, Hideto Yamazaki, Nobuhiro Tanaka, Fumihiko Hasegawa, oshihiro Shimizu
Technical support: Tetsuji Baba, Naohiro Saito, Akiko Saito, Yasuo Ohba
Program supervisor: Katsuo Nakamura
Visual supervisors: Junichi Kawamura, Satoru Yamada
Producer: Hajime Nakatani

Cabinet Graphic Design: Don Marshall

PORTS
note: On the home version, Anna was redone as a separate character with different moves, which a few were recycled from Tekken 1 and 2 to differentiate from Nina. One such move is the 'Red Bomb', denoted f,f+1+2; the animation for the falling opponent is from Tekken 1.

The transformed main boss, known more commonly as 'Ogre 2' (named simply as Ogre in the game itself), was renamed True Ogre in the PlayStation release.

• CONSOLES:

Sony PlayStation (1998)
Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Tekken 5 Ultimate Collectors Edition")
Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Tekken 5"): available in the arcade history mode, with all fighters in the arcade version unlocked.

CONTRIBUTE
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