

While this sounds on paper like a lazy bonus feature meant to pad the console release, the result is actually a fun tertiary mode that perfectly uses the Tekken universe.

As its name would suggest, this was a tag-team bowling minigame where fighters get together to knock down some pins. The biggest addition to the console version was Tekken Bowl. Related: Dead or Alive 6 FAILED Players - Here's How With improved graphical power, the fighters all looked better than ever, with more detail and less blocky appearances than the games on the original PlayStation. This allowed players to choose a favorite from a cast of 30+ fighters, bringing the franchise's first and current generation of characters together for the first time. Tekken Tag Tournament's brevity of plot stems from its categorization as a "dream match" game, involving a cast of fighters from across the franchise including Kazuya Mishima, Michelle Chang and even the deceased Jun Kazama, all of whom had not been in the most recent canon entry, Tekken 3. Sega's Virtua Fighter franchise, while renowned for its realism and deep fighting engine, never quite caught on with casual audiences - especially given Sega's botching of the first few games' console releases. Other 3D fighters existed at the time, but none had the popularity or acclaim of Tekken Tag Tournament or the Tekken series in general. Thus, Tekken taking the concept and running with it in Tekken Tag Tournament not only put tag battles in 3D, but essentially cemented Tekken as the king of 3D fighting games.

While these games all showcased how fun and frantic tag battles could be, they did so on a 2D plane. Series involved its popular Street Fighterfranchise and several superheroes from Marvel Comics. SNK made the playstyle a staple of its King of Fighters franchise, which mashed up teams of three comprised of original characters and classic fighters from Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury. By 2000, tag-team mechanics had become ubiquitous in several fighting game franchises.
