Tekken’s history started under the name Kamui in 1994

Before it was Tekken, Namco’s marquee fighting franchise went by the name Kamui, and a new video showcases the origins of how the series came about.

Bandai Namco’s Namco Museum of Art YouTube channel has published a number of history-lesson videos over the last one year. They cover classic games such as Galaxian XeviousThey also display the original artwork. On Friday, it posted its latest video covering the origins of 1994’s Tekken.

This video is a look at the history of System 11 arcade hardware. Tekken’s origins as a fighting game for the new hardware, showing early development footage reminiscent of Sega’s Virtua FighterTwo simple characters fight in front of an open background.

The video is particularly interesting because it features a lot of images of older sketches and documents that were used in the design of the project back when they were known. Kamui — showing characters that look far different from the Tekken cast we know today — and TekkenShowing concept sketches of characters like Jin and Paul.

You can see how these characters changed from 2D drawings and 3D models. The video also shows details about the creation of each character such as their number of polygons.

In June, Bandai Namco general manager Katsuhiro Harada announcedThis is the most recent version of Tekken Tekken 7, has sold more than nine million copies since its release in 2015, putting the franchise’s total to over 53 million.

For more on the early days of the series, check out our 2019 story on the challenges of developing 3D arcade games in the early ’90s, featuring an interview with TekkenMasanori Yamada, programmer.