A Sonnet for Tekken 6
Oh Tekken Sweet Tekken; a love affair that began in 1998 seemed star-crossed lately. There might have been somebody better at you than me in those glorious early years, but I didn’t know any. I still remember taking all comers in Tekken Tag and having to agree never to tag out to get anybody to play me so I’d have to beat both my opponent’s characters with just one, and still throwing down my controller in mock outrage as I stood up and shouted “Are you not entertained?” when I crushed anybody who dared play me again, and again, and again.
Having chosen XBox 360 in 2005 while you were a ”Sony exclusive”, I though I had lost you forever. Then – Green shoots of hope as Bandai decided that Sony’s market share of next-gen consoles was too small not to include Microsoft – I ran out and bought you the first day you became available on my platform.
But alas, my hope turned to cruel disappointment, as I realized that I could never play you on the ridiculously clunky Microsoft game paddles and their stupid, oversized D-Pads the way I could on PS2 controllers. It was bitter indeed to fumble clumsily through moves that I used to perform in a beautifully synchronized symphony of Japanese animated Kung-Fu violence. And so again, I placed you lovingly in your plastic case and put you on a shelf, thinking we had again been irrevocably separated.
…And there you remain, but perhaps hope lives again. Will this new “improved” game pad reunite us? Will the below illustrated diagram of the newly functional D-Pads put us back on our path to mutual glory? I don’t know. But I hope.
