I Watched the 1998 Tekken 3 World Finals. I'm Speechless.

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0:00 - Intro
6:49 - Tournament Start!
14:40 - Celebrity Golden Joystick
16:04 - DO NOT MISS THE FINAL FURLONG
20:26 - Tournament Resumes

I'm PhiDX, I play Tekken professionally for @ParagonFGC and ArcadeShock.

[joshthefunkdoc]

Whoa, perfect timing since i've been going down a rabbit hole of modern-era Tekken 3 & Tag 1 tournaments lately - thank you for covering this! Going to infodump a little on TK3:

- The character choices on this show are...not *entirely* off the modern meta. India has a very active scene for this game and they absolutely LOVE Paul over there! Though i'm not positive on this, i think deathfist was much safer in 3 and Tag 1 was when they nerfed that and basically crippled him as a result. Heihachi is also probably #3 among the cast for the usual "Mishimas in old games" reasons + that runaway you saw. It's just that nobody was playing the characters who have long been considered god-tier. Speaking of...

- One of the characters most conspicuously absent here was Jin. One thing a lot of people may not know is that EWGF was introduced in Tekken 3...but *only* Jin had it! Heihachi was given his EWGF in Tag 1, and Kazuya not until 4. Laser Scraper/Cannon is also all-around excellent in 3 & Tag 1, even if it didn't have the broken JF from 4. Another major advantage Jin had over Hei was iWS2, as a fast mid launcher that wasn't launch-punishable itself. Funny enough, Jin was nerfed in a way in the PSX version - the original arcade release allowed him to dash cancel in between the 2 hits of d/f+1, 2 and this gave him infinite combos/blockstrings!

- The other character people may be surprised not to see on the show is Ogre. Since Tekken Tag 1 is a much more well-documented game than 3, i won't go into too much detail as most of his bullshit you can read about was there in 3 as well. The key difference that elevates him to god-tier, though, is the fact that Waning Moon was COMPLETELY UNBREAKABLE in 3. Read that last sentence one more time if it didn't hit you right away.

- Tekken 3 had one massively busted general property that, among other things, ended up making True Ogre a far cry from the menace he is in Tag 1. You know the generic running 3 that caused block stagger? In Tekken 3, they *couldn't block* during that stagger. This means you could get all sorts of guaranteed shit from those on block, from Bryan's f, f+2 all the way up to EWGF if your execution is on point! True Ogre's unique problem here is that running 3 hits GROUNDED vs. him, so any knockdown puts him in these completely horrible situations where he either has to continually eat those grounded hits or wake up into the running 3 (either getting knocked down again to reset the situation, or blocking it and still getting hit with something).

- To add to other comments, Paul first gained Ultimate Punishment in Tekken 2. May have just been nerves that made Ryan miss it there.

- After Jin/Ogre/Heihachi, some other real strong characters are Ling + Lei + Law. Ling's usual evasiveness combined well with the cracked movement in this game, and her WS2 was a 13f mid launcher that was completely safe on block. She also had great mixup potential from her juggles if you were willing to sacrifice just a little bit of guaranteed damage. Lei's stance mixups have never been better than they were in his 3/Tag 1 incarnation, and this was also when he first got Haha Step. Law was pretty funny for the simple fact that his 3, 4 was a natural combo, especially when his punch parry gave him enough time to dash up and land it guaranteed. This was also when he first got Junkyard, and you saw the work it was doing lol

[Jaylenz]

The reason why he’s the sun at 4:14 because it was a parody from the sun in “Teletubbies” which was the most popular children’s show in 1998 😭

[yoshomiamoto]

Tekken 3 is widely considered the Golden era of Tekken as everyone who had a ps1 played it. I can't believe how well the game animations still hold up til this day.

[vivitarax]

Legend says that if you look in the background of the first ever caveman paintings, you will see Ryan Hart on an arcade cabinet playing Tekken 3 and whooping everybody

[rpbmpn]

If you're on the older end of the millennial generation, grew up in the UK and enjoyed gaming, you know this programme. The humour is very 90s UK and the girls are probably Page 3 models who would appear in the national newspapers on page 3 with their tits out (not kidding).

The guy in the sun is the world famous astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, who passed away a decade or two ago having also fronted the UK's most popular astronomy programme for about half a century.

[erickent]

This sort of thing is why those of us that remember the 90s, miss the 90s. It was a strange fun time.

[rrrlee]

Watching old tekken being played properly is so wild to me cuz being 10 yrs old at the time i never knew this game could be played like this and not be a mash fest.

[VinnCon]

this video randomly popped up on my feed, I wasn't even a person into the competitive tekken scene but thank you algorithm, this is great content that I didn't know I needed !

[JT-ndqp]

Games Master was an institution in the UK. Totally iconic show. Shame they cancelled it. BTW if you were wondering about the old dude's face in the sun, that's The Games Master, who was portrayed not by an actor but by Sir Patrick Moore, who was the UK's Royal Astronomer and hosted a TV show called The Sky at Night since 1957. (He was basically like David Attenborough, except he talked about space). Normally the Games Master wore a cyber techno helmet and appeared on a screen like he was some kind of AI. Fun times.

[TRÎBE-]

lol i was only like 4 in 1998, but somehow, still the world seemed way better back then to me. I'm glad we still have these old gems that get uploaded to youtube so the next gen can look back like a time machine. Awesome vid and channel!

[welsh_steel]

PhiDX, you're one hell of a guy for bringing this up. You literally just unearthed a bit of nostalgia for me as an old brit.

[Cleggsta_GTP]

Brother, this show was legendary for us as kids / young teenagers growing up in early to mid 90s England. We had no internet, it wasn't in the home when this first came on TV. There were monthly Gaming magazines which were our only source of news, but often they were a bit behind what was going on as they were monthly / bi-monthly. So, Channel 4 Gamemaster, with world famous astronomer Sir Patrick Moore as Games Master, with rough n ready Dominic Diamond presenting - this WAS our guide to the world of home consoles, games, arcade trends etc. We looked forward to this show on Channel 4 ALL WEEK!!!!

Great to see you watching it! The 90s was an incredible time to grow up, with the massive developments in home games systems!!!

[Zntk]

Ryan Hart telling RIP he has won more tournaments than RIP will ever enter is still one of the funniest Tekken commentary moments. There just wasn't enough video evidence back then.

[notmychannelname]

I don't even play games like this but this video is so fun to watch. Especially how much you are into competitive fighting games. All the jargon and excitement really made it entertaining.

[YeshwaYesh]

Really makes you understand how much of a legend Ryan Hart is considering he's still a monster at Tekken even today

[jasonmorrissey]

Ryan hart used to ask me to play a round on killer instinct and tekken in the arcade when he was a youngster and he didnt have the money to play video games, still in contact with him now

[sharksmate]

Debbie may have won, but I believe we're all winners today.

[themonotropicguitarist]

This was so fun to watch! I miss Tekken 3. Used to play the whole neighborhood on PS1 back in the day. Good times.

[Franklojpg]

This made me realize that as a kid there was a whole world hiding behind the arcades that I didn’t know about while I was mashing buttons with my dad 😂

[porcogossen]

Awesome!! I had no idea this even existed so big ty for bringing this up man!