Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion has finally hit console at the time of this article. Every serious Tekken player is hungry right now because it's no longer Texas, California, and New York only playing the game. Everyone has it now. And I'm sure most of you are trying to figure out if you want to play Tekken after a long year of SF4 madness. Tekken 6 has been the number one game in Japan for two consecutive years according to Arcadia Monthly. So what in God's name makes this game stand out compared to other fighting games that come from Japan? There's a variety of reasons as to why it's popular in Japan. There was a slight dry spell in the Capcom and SNK camps in regards to something new. Tekken 6 launched in arcades November of 2007, so the game is pretty old by now if you lived in the above three states or played in Japan. But for a good majority of this country, the game is relatively new and there are probably going to be a lot more new players in the Tekken community. I, for one, am one of them.

So, I've never taken a 3D fighter seriously before in my life. I've grown up on Street Fighter since World Warrior and I have no such experience in 3D fighters that make me even think I'm remotely good at them. It's a whole different world as opposed to 2D fighters where it's really just a 2 dimensional plane with no actual movement beyond the conventional back and forward. Your swagger in 2D is a lot more limited since it's all spacing and zoning and knowing your ranges and what beats what and learning a few easy combos. There are no mechanics such as sidestepping, so in a sense, it almost seems easier to control the pace of a matchup since you really don't have to move all over the screen to dodge and avoid certain attacks. Your best answer is to just block and pray for something that's more than -4 on block.

The terminology itself is weird to read at first because there's just a lot of crazy notations such as iWS(Instant While Standing), which is done by going from d, d/b_d/f to neutral on the stick + whatever button your attack is(might be Bruce's WS[While Standing] 2,1). And of course, most combos look like straight up algebra and a lot of people are intimidated by that. It's almost like how people aren't comfortable with numerical notation which came about with Guilty Gear and Melty Blood. However, in Japan they use numerical notation for all games as opposed to America, where it's only limited to about 2 or 3 games.

Also, one thing you must take strong heed of in 3D fighters is that attacks come in three different ranges: High, mid, or low. The riskiest obviously being the low since universal low parry(simple timed tap of d/f) will lead to wall carry and lots of damage. Think 3S, but not as gay.

Before we go into the combos and such, let's label the notations first:

Left Punch = 1
Right Punch = 2
Left Kick = 3
Right Kick = 4

Stick is basic u, d, f, b, d/f, u/f notations much like all fighters.

One example of the combo notation for Tekken would be Miguel's basic bread n butter combo(bnb combo from here on out):

d/f+2,1(or u/f+4) d/f+1~f SAV d/f+1 d/f+4,1 d+2 B! ff+2,1

Looks pretty nuts, right? But it's very simple since you're not inputting any real dragon punch motions or half circles. Now people see the ~f portion of the combo and usually don't know what it means because in other game notations brackets are used to indicate the holding of a button. Sort of like Balrog's overhead in SF4: b, d/f+[P]. In Tekken, ~f means to hold forward after d/f+1. The reason why you hold forward is because Miguel has a special stance that he goes into and he gets a new move list pretty much from that stance. The stance in this case would be Savage stance(SAV in the combo listed above). The d/f+1 in SAV is basically a relaunch in the combo that keeps them in juggle state long enough for d/f+4,1 to connect. And of course, B! stands for Bound, which is basically an extra bounce that you get on certain moves that allow you to add more hits to your juggles.

Frame data is a lot more different in regards to Tekken as well. Everything starts at 10 frames in Tekken as opposed to 8 frames back in 5.0(Steve and Bryan having the fastest jabs in the game at 8 frames). So if you think -12 is bad, it really isn't. It's safe as all can be. Once you start breaking -14 and higher, then it starts to get a little risky because -14 or higher is usually jab punishable(1) or launch punishable(d/f+2 or u/f+4). Frame data charts are also different from typical SF frame data charts. Input, range, damage, speed, block, hit, and counterhit(CH from here on).

I'll leave off right here for now since there's plenty left to discuss. For now, if you head over to www.shoryuken.com, there is a Tekken glossary courtesy of ShinkuuR which helped me in the beginning to get used to Tekken notation and how to execute certain commands like iWS. So right now, I'll be sidestepping into training mode and soon I'll wavedash into part 2 of this.