Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 builds on the principle of tag-team fights, where each player selects a pair of fighters and can switch between them at any point during the match - the departing character slowly regains health in the meantime, which opens up room for thoughtful switching as well as spectacular tag combos between the two fighters. The game comes from the internal Tekken Team under the Namco Bandai Games banner and is a sequel to the popular spin-off from the PlayStation 2 era, this time with a considerably larger roster of fighters from across the series' entire history.

The arcade version was released in 2011, exclusively in Japanese arcades, and preceded the home release for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by a year, which additionally arrived under the expanded title Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Prologue and gradually gained further content through updates. The arcade form thus offered a smaller selection of fighters and combat arenas than what players know from the later home versions, and it played out directly on coin-operated arcade machines, without home comforts like training mode or a gallery of unlockable content. Matches against random opponents right at the neighboring machine also created a completely different, rawer competitive atmosphere than playing with friends at home on the couch, where you can pause at any time and the opponent is in no hurry - in the arcade, it was about coins and about who would keep standing at the machine.

Because it was the first publicly available form of the game, the arcade version defined the basic balance and feel of the fights, which then carried over, with adjustments, into all later releases, including the expanded home version a year later, which offered additional combat modes on top.

Why play it: For players who want a taste of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 in its original, strictest arcade form - exactly as players first encountered it in Japanese arcades before the expanded home release a year later.