Tekken's family feud has run three decades without a single reboot
Most long video game series eventually wipe the slate clean. Tekken never did. Since Namco's 1994 original, its brawlers have fought over control of the Mishima Zaibatsu while father, son and grandson keep throwing each other off cliffs and into volcanoes, a continuity Guinness has recognised as gaming's longest-running unbroken story.
The name means Iron Fist in Japanese, and each main game revolves around the King of Iron Fist Tournament, staged by the Mishima Zaibatsu conglomerate, with the winner taking control of the company. Combat is hand-to-hand, built on blocks, throws, escapes and ground fighting, with combos, special moves and breakable arenas added over time. It was among the first fighting games to use 3D animation, and almost every main release began life in arcades on boards derived from PlayStation hardware.
The plot is soap opera with punches. In the first game Kazuya takes revenge on his father Heihachi by beating him and hurling him off the very cliff Heihachi once threw him from. In the sequel Heihachi survives, wins back the company and drops Kazuya into an erupting volcano. Tekken 3 jumps 19 years ahead and introduces Kazuya's son Jin Kazama, who later defeats both his father and grandfather, then his great-grandfather Jinpachi, and eventually inherits the Zaibatsu before turning villain.
Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 are regarded as landmarks, and the second game's home version introduced Survival, Team Battle, Time Attack and Practice modes that became fixtures. Tekken 6 was the first entry released on more than one console. Tekken 7 moved to the Unreal Engine and brought in guest fighters such as Akuma from Street Fighter and Negan from The Walking Dead. Tekken 8, which pursues the Kazuya and Jin rivalry to its conclusion, was the first fighting game built on Unreal Engine 5 and skipped arcades entirely.
Commercially, the franchise had shipped over 61 million copies by 2025, ranking third among fighting game series, and critics credit it with raising the standard for the genre. It has also spawned eight spin-offs and three feature films.
Source: Tekken
