#707

A playthrough of the hidden characters Devil and Angel in the arcade version of Namco's Tekken Tag Tournament 1.

Like something out of a buddy cop movie, Devil and Angel team up to take down Unknown. You'll also notice that they transform into one another, which is much cooler than it has any right to be. The reason for this is that both Devil and Kazuya have a special flag which gives them a unique transformation, with one transforming from one into the other. As both Devil characters have the same flag, this means that it triggers the transformation flag in the coding, which works pretty well here it must be said. If you're wondering, yes, this exact same thing happens in the Kazuya video, although it's a bit more on the surreal side there.

Devil returns for probably the final time (until there's a proper model for Devil Kazuya in Tekken 7, anyhow), and it's a good send-off all in all, with him getting a nicely-detailed model and retaining the Tekken 2 Kazuya moveset. The most notable aspect of this is that Devil has Kazuya's original uf+4,4 combo, whereas Kazuya in this game gains Jin's uf+4,4,4,4 combo. I far prefer the latter, as you might expect, but on the upside Devil still retains his laser beam attacks from Tekken 2. His flying laser beam attack has been changed in a particularly useful way; by pressing 3+4 again once you're up in the air, Devil will move to the other side of the screen first before firing his laser. This is particularly useful as, back in Tekken 2, using his flying laser attack nearly always saw you get countered as a result of its slow start-up, and as a result this provides a bit more of a mix-up to Devil's moveset, just making him that bit more viable as a character. There's another incredibly useful aspect to this attack however. As Jim-Jam Jamilio mentioned in a comment to me, spamming Devil's laser attacks is surprisingly formidable in this game. If you time it right, by launching into the flying laser attack before the opponent gets up off of the ground again, you can get them into a loop where they're not quite sure what to do, and so continuously run into or get hit by the laser beam again and again until they're dead. Even Unknown herself is suseptible to this, as I show in the video, which is quite something as she has the cheapest AI of the whole game. There's always something that gets past a computer though. Well, until Skynet finally comes along anyway.

Funnily enough this is the final time we will see Devil, but the second final time we'll see Angel. Angel is Devil's special costume, selected with the start button after he's unlocked, and is yet another bit of attention to detail in this game, as I'm sure programming a whole, special character-costume for a relatively niche character must have been pretty hard work, especially considering the tight schedule Harada and co. were on for this game. It's a really appreciated addition, particularly as Angel is one of the most unappreciated characters in the franchise, and another chance to play as her is pretty great. She still looks like a typical depiction of Athena more than an Angel (and that won't change for her final appearance, either) but it's a great effort nonetheless. Devil is a hell of a lot of fun in this game, as you'd hope from one of the better bosses in existence.