After the release of
Tekken 4, series director
Katsuhiro Harada left
Namco due to pressure with game's decline in sales. Harada's boss insisted him to keep producing more titles as he was capable of pleasing people with his work. After a year away, Harada went back to the company explaining it was due to his passion with fighting games. Namco first announced
Tekken 5 in
E3 2004 during May. Harada aimed to make it the best game in the entire franchise to celebrate its 10th anniversary. He aimed to amplify the action elements of the games and make them more over-the-top. In regards to the handling of the game following the sales of
Tekken 4, Harada claims Namco used this response to develop the game. Namco also aimed to make the game fitting for newcomers. The early success of the arcade led the team to research for more content to add in future installments. Based on the company's revolutionary Dynamic Motion Synthesis technology, endorphin was chosen to implement an AI and dynamics simulation to create 3D character animation in real-time, thus dramatically accelerating 3D animation pipelines in games and visual effect studios. Shinichiro Yoda of Namco was optimisitic with this decision. Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion, said that they were delighted by Namco as they had already put it in test for its first trailer. The arcade cabinet of the game was notable for allowing players to use their PlayStation 2 controls over the regular arcade system. The team felt that for the first time in years, the franchise made a notable progress thanks to
Tekken 5. The game was developed to be different from its predecessor. This was done thanks to the new engine provided by Namco. Early in development, Namco promised gamers there would be a minigame on action adventure style mode similar to the one provided by
Tekken 3. Harada wanted the game to be enjoyable to newcomers as a result of multiple playable characters that might be difficult to master. A blur effect was added to the visuals while several stages were given flames. Among the newcomers, Asuka Kazama stands as a replacement from the missing
Jun Kazama who only appeared in
Tekken 2 and
Tag Tournament. Despite promotion from
Tekken 5 claiming that the character has died in the intro, Namco Bandai denied this statement in interviews.
Tekken 5 also makes most characters use their own native language during cutscenes, introductions to battles and victory scenes. Producer Takai Homma was in charge of this part of the game. Homma recalls having fun in giving the characters their respective lines as well subtitles. This also led to animal characters having their own lines which have to be read. The goal of Homma was surpassing the two previous
Tekken games. The CGI studio
Digital Frontier, who had previously worked with Namco on earlier games, assisted with the creation of CGI cutscenes in the game.
Music The game features a large cast of music composers, including Akitaka Tohyama, Yoshihito Yano,
Yuu Miyake, Junichi Nakatsuru,
Satoru Kōsaki, Rio Hamamoto, Ryuichi Takada, and
Hiroshi Okubo. The same team also worked on the PS2 version, with the addition of Tetsukazu Nakanishi,
Keiichi Okabe,
Kohta Takahashi, Kazuhiro Nakamura, Keiki Kobayashi,
Nobuyoshi Sano, and Katsuro Tajima. The opening song for the PS2 version, "Sparking", features vocals by Tom Leonard and
Jeff Pescetto. The music encompasses many genres, including
techno,
rock and
nu metal.
Victor Entertainment released the soundtrack.
Ports The PlayStation 2 port was made in order to contain everything from the original arcade alongside new content. This originated from fan response who often requested Namco that. Harada gave Kei Kudo the task of compressing the port version of the game properly. In October 2005, the game was re-released under the budget-friendly "Greatest Hits" label in Japan. The game was re-released as
Tekken 5.1, a free upgrade to the arcade version of
Tekken 5. It includes changes to the character life bars and character select screen, and some changes in character moves to improve game balance. For example, Steve Fox's infinite was removed, and a few other strong moves were toned down. The Devil Within was created as something only the port could carry. ==Reception==