Aris on What It Takes To Be Good at Tekken

[UPDATE #2] A YouTube video of the discussion is now up on the ATP YouTube channel! All the laggy Twitch embeds below have now been replaced.

[UPDATE] Thanks to Necromancy Black, a complete written video transcription of this Tekken talk has now been added to this piece for those who prefer to read it!

This segment of a Tekken discussion with the chatroom comes in the form of a Twitch Clip chain so forgive the segmented formatting. If you're interested in more ATP stream content, you can follow the channel over here:

Avoiding The Puddle ≫ https://www.twitch.tv/avoidingthepuddle

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Yeah I'm looking forward to when Tekken 7 is coming out, because I think..uh..

If history is gonna repeat itself, what's gonna happen is a shitload of people are gonna try it and they're gonna realise that the game is really hard.

And it's not that it's really hard so much as... it's really deep. You don't realise how deep it is.

So from the surface it looks like a kiddy pool, right? And you get in it and it's fun but then you realise that this kiddy pool is so deep that it's deeper than the ocean. And way down deep in the depths of this kiddy pool, there are these giant sharks that will just gobble you up before you realise that you're in the ocean. You still think that you're in the kiddy pool and you're just gone. Gobbled up. That's how deep Tekken is...

That's how Tekken is. You don't even realise that you are trash at all, you have no idea your trash. ...you are so bad. And when you realise that you're bad, it's...ah...your whole world crashes before you.

I think Tekken is one of the worst games for that, cause it's such a legacy game, and it's the only game that's left...it's the only 3D game that's left... and it's such a heavy legacy game.

He says “Tekken Tag 2 made me realise I was trash”. No your wrong about that.

It should have made you realise that that game is trash. So...you are wrong. If Tekken Tag 2 made you feel like you were trash then... you know.. you saw it all wrong.

Tekken Tag 2 should make you feel like it's trash. That game sucks. Don't worry about that game. You can be shitty at that game and still good at Tekken, I saw that with my own eyes.

That game has so many components that have nothing to do with Tekken, they're gonna exist only in that game, they never existed before that game and they're never gonna exist again.

Tag crash, fucking wall tag and tag assault? You better...that's it, that existed in that window of time and it's never gonna exist again. And those mechanics have nothing to do with Tekken at all. They're the dumbest mechanics ever.

“How do I become not trash at Tekken?”

Well, the real answer is it takes 2 years to become good at Tekken. That's the real answer. And one of the best Tekken players of all time told me this and he's a Korean player; Nin.

He told me it takes 2 to become...just decent, like a solid Tekken player. It takes 2 years. And two years to him is like, you know, Korean regiment. It takes a Korean player 2 years to become good. So you know add a year..6 months to a year for a normal human. And then you'll be good.

So dedicate yourself to the game I'd say for about...2 years and you'll be good to go. You'll be a solid, solid player. Maybe you'll crack top 3... you know, in America. Maybe.

And that's if you're talented.

If you're one of those no talent motherfuckers... you're doomed. I've seen some people play Tekken... there are some people that if there's a tournament in SoCal right now, right? These people will go to the tournament right? I've been watching these people play for 100 years. I mean I've been watching these same guys play for as far back as I can remember. And they still have never made top 3 in a single tournament.

So that definitely exists, and that could be you. That could be you. You think these guys don't wanna get better? Hell yeah they wanna get better! But they never did. In 100 years...I'm talking Tekken 5.0, Tekken 4..you know we're talking about people who have been playing since way back in those days. Still can't crack a top 3.

It's not just legacy. It's a legacy game but it also requires a lot of different fighting game skills. A lot of different fighting game skills. Like you know how in Street Fighter they say shit like “Oh he's got good footsies, he's got good footsies”? The concept of footsies doesn't necessarily have anything to do with execution in 2D, right? Not necessarily linked.

But in Tekken you have to have excellent execution to even have good footsies. Because “footsies” in Tekken is having excellent control of your character's movement. And that's all execution in Tekken. So you can't have good footsies with execution; they are one. They are the same.

And things like that really make the game a lot more complex than it appears just to the average person. Concepts like movement are very important, it's a 3D game obviously, you know? So you have to utilise the movement or else you're not playing a 3D game. Tekken's a great game.

(Aris reads a twitch comment) Yeah, but Mishima's are fair though. Back in Tekken tag 1? (shakes head) They were not fair. Even the Tekken 5.0 Mishima's were not fair. Heihachi and Devil Jin were so cheap in that game...

...but they were more fair then tag 1. Tag 1 Mishima's were so unfair. The electric in that game could just completely ignore everything. That move was so good that as a top level execution Mishima player you could ignore everything.

That's when you know a move is too good; when you can ignore the rest of the game with it. Like, let me just fucking crush entire characters; Bryan, Xiao, Jun... lemme just crush this entire character with one move, without knowing anything about that character.

I don't need to know the character because I got this move “Electric Wind God Fist”. You combine that move with my immaculate movement skills and spacing and it doesn't matter what your character has. Doesn't matter what move you have, I'm gonna beat it with this one move and spacing. I mean, Mishima's were so crazy back then.

But then they added the crush system....

...it changes everything. The crush system changes Mishima's and makes them mortal. Because Electric Wind God Fist is high and a down jab is a high crush. That's it, that's all I need to hear. Down jab is a high crush, Wind God Fist is a high, end of story. The rest of it is you just gotta figure out when to use your high crush. So it makes the match more normalised, right? Any character against a Mishima becomes more manageable.

But that's the funny thing. See (Sajam) say “but any character with a move that good is boring right?”. But the interesting thing about you just said is that in Tag 1 Mishima's were so complicated and cool and like...the execution level was so high... and there were also another...

..few characters that were so high execution, that the game ended up perfect, it was like a perfect storm. Like, uh, speaking of Storm. In Marvel 2. Remember in Marvel 2 that there were only a few teams that were really viable and like the game lived for so long and was so popular? That's kinda like how Tag 1 came to be. It was this perfect storm of really fun to use that showed lots of skilled and it ended up being popular for years.

But you know in the end...let's face the facts. Tag 1, that game, was, honestly, garbage. If that game came out today it would be the most broken, unacceptable trash ever. I mean, True Ogre and Ogre in that game were out of control. Those characters had the highest stamina, so their health bars were so long. That game had life bar differences, like Street Fighter.

So Heihachi and Xiao and other characters had really low health. And Ogre and True Ogre and...you know some of the other characters, had really high health.

Also, regular Ogre had the best side step in the game. And in that game sidestep was really interesting. The cameraman had not gotten fast enough to follow you, so you could sidestep faster then the camera.

(crash in his game and swears at the armoured car)

Uh..anyways... what were we talking about?