Tekken 8 Arcade Quest First Look: A Pocketful of Quarters and a Love of the Fight

ign.com:

I grew up in arcades, dumping quarter after quarter into machines like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and especially Tekken Tag Tournament – the first fighting game my arcade crew and I ever truly fell in love with. Arcades were special; you could make friends, fight rivals, learn new tricks, and build a community. Unsurprisingly, much of the Tekken 8 team, including producers Katsuhiro Harada and Michael Murray, feel the same way. Arcade Quest, the newest single-player mode in Tekken 8, is separate from the main story, but looks to teach new players the ins and outs of Tekken 8 and introduce players new and old to arcade culture.

For people like me, it’ll be like going home; for people who didn’t get a chance to be a part of the arcade scene, it will hopefully let them see what it’s all about while learning skills that will help them throughout their Tekken journey. Murray described Arcade Quest like this when I sat down with him: “It's like a different story mode, almost. And you use the avatars, the same ones that you use in the Tekken Fight Lounge. You start off knowing nothing and you have a mentor in the local arcade. There's different arcades you visit along the way. In your home arcade you start off in, Max, your mentor, is like ‘Okay, you don't know how to play fighting games. Here's how to block. Why don't you try it out? Good job.’ Or ‘Hey, this is how to do a basic combo,’ and it teaches the basics of the game, then the basics of the new mechanics like Heat, and then combos, how to throw escape, all these different things that you’ll want to know.”

Arcade Quest is utterly charming. You start off in Gong, your local arcade, which has just gotten some Tekken 8 machines. Max offers to sit down and teach you