You can pair Baek with Hwoarang for the ultimate taekwondo tag-team and Eddy with Christie for the shin-hacking dream - or if you'd prefer something a little less conventional, you can opt for an oddball pairing like the dainty Xiaoyu with the towering Marduk, or the kangaroo boxing skills of Roger Jr. The only thing missing is any genuinely new characters, but with over 50 familiar faces to mix and match, the lack of new blood isn't too jarring. I'm pleased to report that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has been worth the wait, as from the opening sequence that hits the nostalgic erogenous zones in all the right places to the weighted meaning of the word 'tag', Katsuhiro Harada and his team have crafted a high-quality package that should entice the dabblers back while offering added depth for the zaibatsu diehards. There's an optional 3D mode for those who've taken the plunge, although the game still looks fantastic without it. What's strange is that it's taken Namco well over a decade to return to one of the greatest sideshows in fighting game history. Anyone with the faintest interest in gaming could spectate, play or spend hours in the training room with their chosen pair of characters. You could argue that the first Tag Tournament was little more that a graphically improved version of Tekken 3 with a bolstered roster and a functional tag system - but even when played today, it's clear that Namco struck a near perfect balance between visual finesse, button-tapping accessibility and mechanical sophistication.

There wasn't even enough change left over to for a second controller, but when I saw that intro playing for the first time, I was instantly hooked.

None of my gaming friends made the leap either, so when I happened upon a used PS2 in a pawn shop just before Christmas 2000, I scraped all my funds together for the console and a copy of Tekken Tag Tournament. When the PlayStation 2 made its emotional debut, I was too young and too jobless to afford one.

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