When we recall the memories from our past, we see that our lives had been divided into the eras when we underwent certain strong emotions. Those could be the emerging rebellious within us while we were approaching puberty, small moments of joy owing to an opportunity that suited our wish or the desperation caused by a non-comprehensible suffering. Most of those emotions for me in my early childhood were related to the desire of finding any possibility to drop by the arcade in the neighborhood to grab the excitement of my first ever game "Tekken" (Iron Fist, Japanese: 鉄拳). The parents, however, despised the idea that their only son could join the company of vagabonds. They were right in their speculations up to an extent that most of the fouls were taking place in those colorful corners. The young kids would bunk their classes, indulge in fights, learn the abusive language and above all could be a part of the undercover betting culture.

Modified Image

That’s right, in the countries where morals and norms are the first lines of performance, it was hard to imagine that betting could be possible through an open door. It did not at all mean that people were/are not accustomed to it or there was any less amount of bettors. Instead, I believe the exact opposite is valid but the only difference was that bettors would not have a standard or sophisticated way of betting due to the unavailability of established platforms. They would rather find other unusual racehorses and parameters, such as the performance of young kids in the arcades, grades of the students, gender of the people who would cross a certain junction in 5 hours and so on. As you might have guessed by now, I was one of those arcade kids, who could often manage to sneak away from home with the video games shop being the only obvious destination. I would not blame myself as I had developed an agreeable talent for that most famous game of the time but apparently, talent alone was not enough.


Tekken Characters for the Story:

The arcade game gained such enormous popularity that the players started to develop a curiosity for the storyline behind the characters. To feed their curiosity, a comic writer "Rui Takato" introduced "Tekken Komikku" on the game’s 15th anniversary. The comic series fueled its success and the game is still in the market with a recent version of ‘Tekken 7’. Inspired by the idea and in order to pay tribute to my first ever game on its upcoming 25th anniversary, I attempted to narrate my own game-related incidence in a comic style.

All images were downloaded from Google (open source) and were modified to depict the storyline

Episode 1/2: The Dark Veil of Ego