It looks fairly good on the 3DS screen, without distracting visual artifacts from the compression process – and were it included on the cartridge alongside a fully featured fighter, we'd be thrilled to have it handy for a rainy day.Tekken 3 is one of the most iconic fighting games ever to come out of Japan. Rounding out the package is last year's CG movie, Tekken: Blood Vengeance, a 92-minute heap of fluff that details the backstory behind Tekken 6. Since nobody seems to be playing friendly matches, it's sure to be a recurring annoyance for most.Īnd that's everything: a couple of shallow single-player modes and quick-hit online or local multiplayer fights, plus a persistent fighter ranking system throughout. Frustratingly, with ranked matches, you have to pick your favorite fighter from the main menu and stick with him/her, or otherwise quit out to make a change. And it's not due to the 3D, as the effect is disabled for online battles.

We encountered several lag-free battles that flowed beautifully start to finish, but also notched a near-equal amount of sluggish skirmishes, plus the game offers no indication of an opponent's connection quality. Tekken 3D Prime Edition also includes online play, in addition to local multi-card wireless battles, though the execution was spotty in practice.

And much like we've seen before, the touch screen is used to offer easy access to a few commands in battle via virtual buttons. Like the 3DS' other fighters, Tekken 3D feels a little cramped with the tiny buttons, d-pad, and circle pad of the Nintendo 3DS, but as a four-button fighter, it's quite playable, and all the familiar moves and combos remain intact. As a portable take on the latest core entry (2009's Tekken 6), Prime Edition contains all of the familiar faces from the franchise – 40 in total, including a younger-looking Heihachi Mishima modeled after his earlier incarnations. No doubt, Tekken 3D has a few things going its way. It feels much less like a thick, scaled-down console release than something akin to the recent Tekken Hybrid on PlayStation 3: one last, half-hearted attempt to squeeze another release out of a series that's losing momentum with each lackluster offering.

Street Fighter and Dead or Alive have worked similar magic on the Nintendo 3DS thus far, but curiously, Tekken 3D Prime Edition falls flat on the dual-screened device.

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