Button Mashers Have Place in Tekken Games

Fighting games have been making a comeback in recent years, mostly driven by Street Fighter IV and its many spin-offs, but one problem that has affected the genre for years, button mashing, is still around and seems unsolvable.

At least one leading developer working on a fighting game series believes that the solution is to accept this approach as valid for some players.

Speaking to Gamasutra, Katsuhiro Harada, who is the director working on the Tekken series, has stated, “What we've found is that a lot of players never even touch practice modes. It's worth noting that when the fighter genre first hit arcades, there weren't any real tutorials.”

He added, “Instead, the designers tweaked the difficulty level such that after a couple of credits, you had already gone from beginner to intermediate player - something you could then improve upon by learning more moves and practicing.”

Harada says that fighting games should include simpler and quicker only modes that allow any player to log in and just fight another player without having to worry about life gauges and defeat, with the only aim being to learn the moves and talk to other players who are trying the same thing.

The developer says that developers need to balance the needs of the many, who want to have an easy entry point for all games, with those of the dedicated fans, who are saying that button mashers are able to beat veterans too easily.

At the moment the team at Namco Bandai working on Tekken is preparing a spin-off which sees the characters take on combatants from the rival Street Fighter universe.

The game will use the mechanics of the Tekken series and will be launched on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 at some point during 2013.

Before that Capcom will release the Street Figher X Tekken companion game.