With Street Fighter IV now ripping up the iPhone charts, attention seems to once again beturning toward the fighting game genre.
Theres a wealth of one-on-one fighters for game developers to draw upon, and Namco was ready and waiting with a new mobile adaptation of its classic answer to Segas Virtua Fighter, Tekken.
This new mobile version competes more closely with the afore mentioned Street Figher, however, as it dispenses with the 3D graphics on the mobile platform and opts for the more manageable hand-drawn 2D visual style.
It works just as well on the small mobile screen, however, and manages to present a nicely caricatured representation of your favourite Tekken pugilists.
To begin with only two of those fighters are initially available, though a full roster of eight combatants can eventually be unlocked as you progress.
And those characters all arrive with their complete assortment of styles and combos intact, withthe keypad providing a surprisingly workable control system for throwing those lightning fast kicks and punches.
One thing Tekken has always suffered from is the effectivenessof button mashing - something aficionados of the fighting game genre are quite repelled by.
This version is no different, and despite being able to chain long numbers of combos together if you take the time to learn the moves, youll probably progress further in Tekken Mobile by bashing the keypad hard, fast and frequent.
While this might work against the AI, theres a saviour waiting in the wings of this new mobile adaptation.
Tekken Mobile is one of the few pocket fighters to include Bluetooth multiplayer, and button mashing against a skilled human opponent doesnt perform nearly as well, making the two-player tournaments the real highlight of this first class fighting extra vaganza.
In the likely event that youre playing alone, however, you might find that you power through the game a bit quickly and easily.
Namco has evidently considered this minor shortcoming, and included something of a side-scrolling variation that gives Tekken Mobile the added longevity to put an extra point on its overall score.