#704

A playthrough of the boss Unknown in the arcade version of Namco's Tekken Tag Tournament 1.

Tekken Tag was released into arcades in 1999, only around a year and a half after Tekken 3. Harada and co. were instructed by Namco to create a new Tekken game during that timeframe to capitalise on the absurd popularity Tekken 3 was beginning to bring to the franchise. Without the time to fully create new assets or create a true new instalment to the series, the team decided instead to opt for a dream-match type game, turning it effectively into the definitive Tekken experience, something seen previously with dream-match titles like KOF 98 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

Apart from a refined combat system, Tekken Tag also introduced its eponymous Tag system. Like the tag battle system seen in Kizuna Encounter, players only have to take out one character of the opposing team in order to win a match Once tagged out, a character will slowly begin to refill health to the maximum of their red health bar. This game also introduces tag combos, where a character can tag out during a combo and lead into a continued combo with their partner, for some substantial damage.

Tag's starting roster is also extremely impressive, starting out with 20 characters, including the return of Armor King, Ganryu and Michelle, and the game also includes no less than 13 additional hidden characters, including the bosses from the previous Tekken games, making ultimately for an extremely definitive, and satisfying experience. Especially when you're doing a boss retrospective, that's for sure.

Our boss this time is a mysterious woman simply known as...Unknown. Unknown's main attire is some sort of dark ooze, and she's possessed by demonic wolf spirit, who follows behind her and mimics all of her actions. It's a simple but extremely effective design, evoking all sorts of inferences and ideas without saying anything directly, another form of Tekken's fantastic story-telling, even in a non-canon title like this.

Unknown herself, as you might expect from a mostly rushed game, has no unique moves. Instead, she starts off with Jun's moveset (something I'll talk more about in TTT2) and can switch freely to any other style in the game she chooses. Meaning she can mix up whenever she wants to, and force you to swiftly change your tactics on how to deal with her. She also has significantly more health than you, and has a nasty surprise for when you do actually deplete her lifebar. The red part is her true lifebar, which means you have to struggle to take out the remainder of her lifebar. Not only does she seem to deal increased damage against you, but Unknown also has a nasty ability where she can destroy the red part of your lifebar with an air juggle. This means you have even less health than you did before, and suddenly tagging out isn't much of an advantage.

I used to like Unknown, and I still love her design and her mysterious qualities to some extent, but she's definitively worn out her welcome for me as a character now. She is much more difficult to fight in this game than in the PS2 port, and this version is less refined in terms of mechanics and combat than the PS2 port as well, often making fights with her an exercise in frustration more than anything else. Indeed, I just outright run out the clock on most of them, as I can rarely get those final few hits in needed to defeat her. Truth be told, she's an exceptionally lazy boss (like something out of an early MK game), but I think Harada and co. did alright on the whole, making her a bit more fun to fight in the PS2 port. Indeed, the drab visuals and underwhelming soundtrack of this version really don't help it much. Couple this with an infuriating AI, which does little but move-read and block your attacks before countering with their own, and you've got a boss which is a complete uphill battle. Indeed, said brokenness is a real sign of things to come, it must be said. That said, watching someone fight Unknown for the first time in an arcade all those years ago what was an experience, and it really ignited my imagination and my interest for both the series and the genre as a whole.

Also, I bare no responsibility for any nightmares suffered as a result of watching the Unknown v. Unknown fight in this video. As I mentioned with True Ogre, the hardware was getting pushed to its limits by this point. Unknown's stage had to be fully dark in order to allow for three full sprites on screen at the same time, and in fact if you don't force the game to be on her stage when you hack her, it will just crash if you try to load up a match. Hence, well, the nightmare match at the end of the video.

And, of course, this is not the first boss to be called Unknown, either. That was in the unfortunately titled Heaven's Gate, where there was a potential end-boss called Unknown. Maybe it translates better as a term into Japanese? I couldn't say.