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	Tekken Tag   Developer  Namco Game Type  Beat-em-up Distributor  Sony Date Posted  May 00

Strolling over to Namco's booth we were naturally drawn to one of that companies premiere PS2 launch titles - Tekken Tag. Before jumping right in and kicking some Tekken butt, we decided to stand back and observe the game for a while as other attendees played. The reason for this was two-fold, I personally wanted to see for myself if there were any of the now famous "jaggies" in the game and also to see how the parallax scrolling was handled. These are the two things that are rather difficult to observe while actually in the heat of battle First of all, the title does not appear to use anti-aliasing as the screen appeared incredibly sharp and well defined (this is a good thing). As far as the characters go, yes when looking for them I could spot jagged edges (some characters more so than others). But to be honest, the polygon count is so damn high that the whole jaggie thing is almost a non-issue. It was certainly not distracting and not as apparent as in Tecmo's DOA title. As for the background / foreground issue…yep, it does look like the fighters are on a constantly revolving carousel. There is a very real separation between the fighter's area and the background field of view. My take is that this was the solution the developers came up with the implement the infinite fighting field that Tekken is famous for. Looking back, ALL of the previous Tekken's handled this in exactly the way, but because the PS2 is able to display such crispness and detail, it is all the more apparent now. Anyway, it was time to jump in and actually test drive this baby. For anyone that has even played a Tekken game before you will feel immediately at home. All of the characters (with the exception of Gon) from the previous three Tekken titles appeared to be here. Control is as good as it ever was (which I always considered to be exceptional) and the Dual Shock2 controller relayed the commands flawlessly. What we basically have here is the ultimate tribute to the Tekken series with very important exceptions…the graphics are now out of world and the sound effects/music are the best in series. This is basically going to be a wonderful launch title for those wanting old school Tekken pumped up on PS2 steroids and also a sweet way for newcomers to get introduced to the series. It's not without it's faults, but if you want the best Tekken title currently available (or soon to be anyway), you gotta get a PS2 to play it on.