Tekken's striking return to form, after a forgettable era during the 7th generation, has been one of the biggest highlights this generation. Namco has managed to make the game exciting again. Exciting to play, and more importantly, extremely exciting to watch, which is an important success criterion in the age of Youtube and Twitch.

The Tekken World Tour, a new global competition format, in which a series of 27 tournaments are held worldwide to identify the best players and invite them at the end of each year to the Tekken World Tour Finals, with a prize pool that's been increasing year over year. This helped the game grow beyond Namco's expectations, helping Harada receiving the necessary support to expand the game with 3 seasons passes and beyond. Harada has managed to keep the game fresh with old, new & guest characters. Akuma (SF), Geese (KOF) are prominent characters that are probably more fun to watch in Tekken than the games they were ported from

Moreover, new techniques like rage drive, rage art & other experimental techniques that seem to be resonating well among the Tekken community. Despite lacking in the graphical department, the game still managed to be flashier than ever, the real time Slow Mo that gets activated at certain moments during the fight worked so well for Tekken and managed to make the tournaments even more fun to watch:

2018 TWT Finals saw Ranchu, a Korean player, stealing the show by playing and winning the tournament with a character that many viewed as a low-tier character. 

This helped kicking off 2019 tournaments with lots of hype and anticipation. Which obscure character was gonna steal the show next? Akuma & Kazumi, a guest character & a new character, were the rising stars of Tekken 2019, both characters have been part of Tekken 7 since its release but were written off by competitive community until this year. The scene was still populated witch iconic Tekken characters nonetheless.

This is the craziest set featuring the best Tekken Akuma player in 2019:

The prize pool for this year's finals was 185k dollars, 75k dollars for the winner of the tournament and 6.25k dollars for those who end up 7th/8th in the top 8. Harda finished the year off by releasing a new exciting character that looks & plays fresh:

It will be interesting to see where Tekken 2020 will land in terms of popularity and sales. 

I had never seen a fighting game stay FOTM for so long in gaming bars (3 years, my favourite bar closed before Tekken 7 became old).
I hope they can reproduce that success next gen.

FOTM? new acronym. Bars? You lost me 

Tekken Tag 2 and Tekken 7 were really good games. My biggest issue with tag 2 was how fast you got knocked out in that game. 2 combos, and you're done. Tekken 7 has toned back a lot of what made Tag 2 so unapproachable, while keeping everything else.

Shouldn't that be tekKEN?

Great game. I play mainly offline chest battle to see how many consecutive wins i can achieve and earn money to unlock everything in gallery.

Tekken Dark Resurrection was great on PSP and PS3. I skipped Tekken 6 though. Maybe I will try Tekken 7 but SFV has been my fighting game of choice this gen.

I guess it's a great competitive game. I personally play Tekken mainly for the campaign mode and to see each character's story. So... this game was kind of a disappointment to me. But I'm glad people can enjoy it for other aspects ^^

As for Gen 7 Tekken... well, I liked Tekken 6 (not loved it though), Dark Resurrection was an excellent port/remastered of Tekken 5 and Tag Tournament 2 was a dream come true for a fan like me. The only black sheep was Tekken 3D for the 3DS, but I heard that despite not having a campaign, it was very solid gameplay wise...

Oh yes, his Evo 2019 win was dramatic. A beautiful Mishimas feud. It also was a good example of how you can win in Tekken even without executing crazy combos that Tekken was famous for. New characters like Kazumi rely on few basic tools that are enough to win you a major tournament. 

Its a pretty good game I probably play it some more when it hits gamepass and might buy the ultimate edition eventually but that being said I though both Tekken 6 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 where better games overall.