In the realm of fighting games, there are of course only a few big competitors. The million sellers… the ones with millions of fan pages devoted to them. There’s Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Dead or Alive, and everything else. Well, Street Fighter made its way to the Gameboy Advance last fall, as a widely hailed superb translation of the original Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and a King of Fighters game has been in the works for quite some time now. But ever since it was rumored that Tekken was hitting our fair system, people have been waiting with great anticipation of what this could be like. I was one of those people; I’m a complete Tekken nut. So when I finally got the Gameboy Advance version I immediately went to play it and ignored (remember this was early morning) all hygienic duties until around noon.

Tekken Advance to someone who loves the series as much as I do is a whole lot of good things and one big bad thing that nearly crushes it. First, they absolutely nailed the graphics and beauty of Tekken. The first time I turned it on I could not believe what I saw… it was just like Tekken 3 only without detailed faces. They also got the gameplay right, even with fewer buttons. R is grab, A and B are mixed around to do all the combos they normally have. All the signature moves I remembered are there, like Law’s double kickflip and Xiaoyu’s hand-wheel of death. Yoshimitsu was included, something I suppose they had to have but nonetheless a great feat to pull off, since he has some very unique control schemes. Unfortunately the game only has ten characters, nine of which are available from the beginning and Heihachi who must be unlocked. While the staples of the Tekken universe (Jin, Heihachi, Yoshimitsu, Law, Xiaoyu and Paul) are included, a few players will no doubt be grumbling that rather useless characters Nina, Hwoarang and Gunjack were included instead of “insert favorite character here”. For me, I’m a Lei master and I was a little disappointed that Hwoarang (who has similar moves but not nearly as powerful as Lei’s) saw action while Lei sat on the sidelines. I can see how they were only able to fit ten characters though, once we touch on the graphics.

Quite simply, it’s beautiful... absolutely beautiful. Tekken Advance is in my mind one of the greatest-looking games to ever be released for the Gameboy Advance. Although it has a rather fuzzy-outlined look to it, simply what they were able to create with sprites is rather amazing. The characters actually look and behave like their polygon counterparts, including a 3D arena to circle your opponent around in! The animation is very fluid and really helps impress the eye. Like I said, this is Tekken in a can… they were authentic as possible with keeping what they could. Now those signature moves look proper, and the first time you see Yoshimitsu bash someone’s face in a little tear will come to your eye. The backgrounds are sharp but of course unanimated, which is slightly disappointing. I didn’t want Tekken Tag Tournament style backgrounds of course but Street Fighter-esque “crowd with 2 frames of animation” might have been a little better then no movement at all. Still, that’s a small complaint and hardly registers when a game is this beautiful. Namco artists, pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.

No Tekken package would be complete without sound of course, and Tekken Advance delivers here with a tour de force job. The little GBA speakers will be rocking with all the stage music you’ve come to love, all accurately put into high-quality MIDI’s. Every stage has the music you remember, so that just makes it even cooler. The background themes also come through the speakers extremely loud and clear, which is a rarity in most under-mixed GBA soundtracks. Another big score for Tekken Advance was the inclusion of the proper character sound effects. All the characters have very distinctive yells and grunts, so even if it isn’t exactly digitized speech… including them was a major victory. Yoshimitsu has this really weird “constipated alien” sounding grunt, and they included that with clarity. Oh, and the announcer indeed does digitized speech that doesn’t sound robotic either (it sounds just like announcer in Tekken Playstation games) so that’s cool too. Overall on the audio/visual front Tekken comes through as pretty much the one to beat. What the graphics lose in sharpness they make up for in detail and animation… and the sound is sweet all around with no noticeable weaknesses.

Unfortunately, there’s one area Tekken falls down and this may affect your purchasing decision. The replay value… it isn’t really there like it should be. Admittedly, Heihachi is an unlockable character but that really takes maybe two hours to unlock (you have to beat Arcade with all nine characters), and after that you can unlock two additional modes with are really just slightly useful extensions of already existing modes. Speaking of modes, there are quite a few… but there is no reward for mastering them and no “fun mode” like Tekken Ball, which could be considered the greatest game of all time. Tekken Ball requires a ball and the pre-existing character models… so it shouldn’t have been hard to pull off. The fact something like that wasn’t included is a bummer. There are survival and tag modes, both of which are executed well enough, and the multiplayer is addictive as crack if you can get a friend to buy a second cart (there are no single cart options at all)… but I have a feeling most gamers will be done with this sooner then later. I often show it to my friends, “Dude, it’s Tekken… on Gameboy!” but after that it gets the play every now and then but definitely isn’t a time-stealer. If you can only afford one or two games, this quite possibly is too expensive for the replay you get… look into Mario Advance 2 or Sonic on the GBA with your hard-earned money.