While the world outside of Japan waits with anticipation for Tekken Tag Tournement 2 hitting the shelves for us to hoard, Namco decided to treat the fans with something out of the box.

The live-action movie that we saw last time was really a buzz-kill and far from the actual universe in the Tekken series. This time they made it right.

Now that the movie is animated, the makers actually had the option to stay true to the real looks of the characters, which makes this movie so great for fans of the series – which this is made for. People who haven’t read up on or don’t have any interest in the story and the relations between the characters won’t get much from the movie, as it just will be another action fighting movie with a weird ending.

The story takes place between the events in Tekken 5 and Tekken 6. It’s not the typical good fighting the evil story. Two big companies appears to be going for world domination and the power that comes with it – the twist to the movie is that it’s something else that they are trying to get. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

After Anna makes an ambush on Nina and the fight breaks out between the two, Nina escapes and reports about the incident at her headquarters. You’ll quickly discover that the sisters work for two different companies, each owned respectively by Kazuya Mashima and Jin Kazama – and we all know that even they are father and son, they are mortal enemies.

The movie gives vast hints that Heihachi Mashima is dead – a portrait on the wall of the headmasters office at Ling Xiaoyu’s school hints and the headmaster (Ganryus appearance here is weird) talking about Heihachi’s death confirms, but we all know better, and so does the involved characters that very vaguely mentions that he’s alive and hiding. Ganryu dismiss Ling off to another school because she’s late.

But that’s not all that’s to it. Anna appears and persuades Ling to take a job; She needs to get information on a student at the school. Here she meets Alisa, a witty and sweet (maybe too sweet…) girl, that have a hard heartache for the guy that Ling investigates. They quickly become friends, but Alisa have a secret…

I was watching the movie in english with english subtitles for obvious reasons. Voice acting and the effort on syncing them is decent and watchable without having too much of child cartoon feeling, and the graphics are so close to reality that you can see the lips aren’t quite following the voice, just like when live action movies are dubbed. Shading and effects are really really great, and I felt like I was watching how Tekken 10 would look like in the future.

Tekken Tag in HD

It’s been 11 years since the game first came out on the PS2 and it’s a welcomed look back in time. Tekken Tag Tournement was the first fighting game with Tag Team implementation which meant each fight lasted longer, as each player had chosen two characters to fight with and being able to switch between the two in the middle of the heated battle, avoiding getting K.O.’ed – at least until neither character didn’t had much health left.

Of course a remake means that the game has been enhanced a bit, so graphically it’s nicer to look at than the Ps2 version, yet it looks old compared to new games, but who cares? I can get my Tag Team needs fulfilled now.

Tekken Tag 2 prologue

With only four characters there isn’t much to see. There’s the character viewer which actually is nice, and when I played around in it, I quickly discovered the nice animations and a great engine for the physics department – hair looks more natural and clothes falls better than ever, following the characters body proportions. Tekken Tag Tournement 2 will be glorious, albeit the demo contained limited anti aliasing, so the contour of moving objects did not live up to expectations.

Of course there’s the ability to play two-on-two so that the player can test out the fighting system on their own. Only major issue here is only four characters is available, which makes it repetitive. This might end up being the demo available closer to launch of the full game, but if they just doubled up the contestants available, the playability of the demo would be so much better.

All in all, this package of goodies for the fans is pretty solid, albeit you could discuss the actual value of the bundle versus what the price is; A movie, a demo and a remake of 11 year old game.