THE big fat man in a red short and blonde hair punched his opponent in the face. With uncanny speed, he jumped into the air and kneed him, again in the face.

His opponent, a man in ceremonial armor, swung his sword and struck the big fat man twice. The Filipinos watching all cheered and screamed, enjoying the slugfest.

Timezone Trinoma was recently transformed into the arena of the first international Tekken 6 competition. Five of the best Tekken players from Timezone Philippines, Timezone Australia and Timezone New Zealand came to vie for the trophy, some pretty nifty prizes and the bragging rights to say they were the champions of this immensely popular fighting game.

“Tekken was born around 1994 when most of the fighting games were all 2-dimensional,” said KC of Bandai Namco, translating for Katsuhiro Harada, the designer of Tekken. “We wanted to move into a 3-dimensional fighting game to add more dimension into game play.”

Harada and the rest of his team came to the Philippines to introduce the latest upgrade to the Tekken game system Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion. They also announced that the Philippines was the first country in the world (outside Japan) to get the upgrade. The crowd cheered at this announcement.

The creators of Tekken seemed uncomfortable at being rock stars, which was how Filipinos were treating them. In an oversized brown coat, Harada stood on stage without emotion, totally out of his element—which was probably more inside his room or office designing game programming.

But when the signal was given for autograph signing, the fans lunged toward them to have posters and CDs signed.

Geeks into rock stars. All for the love of Tekken.

Ready … fight!

The competition brought to our shores Glen Wagstaff and Jamie Joe from New Zealand and Andrew Kim from Australia. Kim is famous for being the top Tekken player in the world, with people watching YouTube videos of him playing. Just playing. Daniel Chua and Carlo Racela made up the Philippine team.

Most of the players seemed uncomfortable in the spotlight, preferring the solace of the seat before the console with the joystick and 4 buttons by their hands. Only Racela engaged the audience, making jokes and hamming it up for the cameras.

The audience, many of whom had battled with Racela in Timezone Megamall, cheered for the home team. They were shown on a huge split screen, and immediately the Pinoys got into the game.

Carlo vs Andrew

Kim quickly beat out his first three opponents with ease, including Racela, but lost to the Kiwi Wagstaff while Racela beat out all his opponents except for Kim. With 3 wins each, the final bout belonged to Racela and Kim for the championship.

Racela stuck to his character, the big fat man in the red shirt, Bob. Kim jumped game to game with Jack-6, Julia and Law. The crowd cheered for the home team, and with all eyes on the screen, managed to fluster Kim.

Every time Bob landed a power punch on Law, the crowd erupted into a roar. “Parang Pacquiao,” someone in the audience said.

Racela won every match in the championship and was declared the winner of the first international Tekken 6 competition.

Racela, a nurse who just plays as “a pastime,” has been playing since Tekken 3. He has joined local competitions before this, but never on an
international level. He has heard of Kim and even seen some of the videos. He never imagined he’d play against him, much less beat him.

The crowd cheered as Racela took to the stage to be awarded the grand prize. Kim, a gracious 1st runner-up, smiled on the sidelines. Harada and the rest of his team were still signing autographs as the sounds of a busy Saturday afternoon permeated through Timezone.

Tekken 6 has arrived. Let the fight begin.