Tekken was a great start to what would become an incredible fighting series.
A surprising thing about going back and playing the original Tekken, is how little the series has changed over the years. The basic mechanics are largely unchanged. Many of the characters have similar moves and combos to the original. Still, I had some serious problems with the original Tekken. The original Tekken suffers from some serious balancing and control issues. The control in particular, is extremely finnicky. Even when I know the correct buttons to pull off a combo, it only has maybe a 60% success rate. And this is for simple combos, involving only two buttons and a joystick move. For bigger combos, the success rate is even lower. This can be a problem against the rather punishing AI. Maybe others have better luck than me. But it kinda hurts this game, especially when compared to the less strict controls on the later versions. It doesn't cripple it, though. It's still a very fun game to play.
Don't get me wrong, Tekken was an amazing game for its time. It was still better than Virtua Fighter in some ways. One area where Tekken definitely deserved praise in its day was in its visuals. Particularly in the animation category. This game was made in 1994, and some of the same animations made their way into 2004's Tekken 5. Sure, they might've been cleaned up a bit in that 10 years, but they still look very similar to each other, and they looked just as impressive in Tekken 5 as they did in the original. 3D animations are rarely like that. Most games' animations from 1994 look painfully dated by today's standards.
Tekken was a great start to what would become an incredible fighting series. If there were a gaming museum, there would undoubtedly be an exhibit for this game. Even if it's not the best to go back and play today, the original Tekken laid the groundwork for what would become, in my opinion, the best 3D fighting series out there.