Tekken

The original Tekken featured eight starting characters including Kazuya Mishima, Nina Williams, Paul Phoenix, Marshall Law, King, Michelle Chang, Yoshimitsu, and Jack. Heihachi Mishima served as the final boss and became playable after completing the game. The game was developed by Namco and designed by Seiichi Ishii, who had previously worked on Virtua Fighter at Sega.

Tekken ran on the Namco System 11 arcade board, which was architecturally similar to the original Sony PlayStation hardware. This close relationship made the PlayStation port of Tekken notably faithful to the arcade version compared to competing ports of the era. The System 11 board was also used for other Namco arcade titles including Soul Edge.

While both were early 3D fighting games, Tekken distinguished itself with a four-button control scheme where each button corresponded to a specific limb (left punch, right punch, left kick, right kick). Virtua Fighter, developed by Sega's AM2 division, used a simpler three-button layout and focused on more realistic martial arts animation. Tekken also featured more dramatic character designs and cinematic presentation compared to Virtua Fighter's grounded aesthetic.

Tekken was first released in arcades in 1994 and the PlayStation port followed in 1995, becoming one of the earlier third-party titles on the console. The PlayStation version was a strong seller and helped establish the platform as a viable home for fighting games. Namco released Tekken 2 in arcades the following year, with a PlayStation version arriving in 1996.