The Tekken series has always done well in arcades, but it truly came into its own as a home release on Sony's various video game consoles. The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 have received the brunt of Namco's Tekken series, but now it's time for the PlayStation Portable to get into the act with a port of the latest arcade upgrade for the series, Tekken: Dark Resurrection. This game builds on the content and characters from Tekken 5, adding more fighters, more moves, new backgrounds, new customization options, and more. Plus, it's one of those amazing portable games that raises the bar and resets your expectations about what a portable machine can do.

The largest factor in resetting those expectations comes from the game's graphics. While the PSP doesn't pull off a polygon-perfect port of the arcade game, the characters look and move as well as you could hope. The corners seem to have been cut in the backgrounds, which occasionally sport a grungy texture or two, and in the pre- and postfight animation, which isn't quite as smooth as the fighting. Those things aside--and they don't get in the way at all--Tekken: Dark Resurrection gives off a real "this platform shouldn't be able to look this hot" vibe. On top of that, the game's loading times are pretty manageable, averaging somewhere under 10 seconds between fights, and even less if it's a rematch on the same background with the same fighters. So the visual quality doesn't come at the expense of speed, which is great.

The gameplay in Tekken: Dark Resurrection is also spot-on with what you'd expect from the series. The controls are responsive, though the occasionally tricky diagonals on the PSP's D pad took an hour or so of getting used to before we could pull off combos and juggles without trouble. If you like, you can also use the analog stick to control movement. The fighting itself is right in line with previous Tekken games, though there are three characters here that weren't in Tekken 5. Armor King returns to the lineup, and there are two all-new characters. Lili is a rich girl with street-fighting skills, and Dragunov is a Russian special forces operative who fights in a sambo style with plenty of powerful strikes. Both of the new characters fit right into the lineup and seem as deep and interesting as the rest of the cast. Also, unlike most Tekken games, Dark Resurrection starts with the complete cast of 34 characters available, so you won't have to dig through story mode multiple times to get all of the fighters.

Players who are familiar with the Tekken series will be right at home with the available modes, many of which come from Tekken 5 on the PlayStation 2. In addition to the arcade mode, which lets you unlock crazy prerendered ending videos, there are plenty of submodes, including a robust practice mode, team battles, time attack, and a quick battle that lets you pick your first opponent. There's a versus mode that lets two players compete locally over an ad hoc connection, using the same sort of lobby system that has appeared in previous PSP fighting games. You can also merge your rankings with other players' rankings, so you can have something to compare your time-attack times against.

The best part of the game is the way it uses artificial intelligence profiles. This is something that appeared in Tekken 5, but the ghost recording system and online options make it more worthwhile here. Ghosts are profiles that are meant to replicate another player's fighting style. While it certainly isn't perfect, they do seem to make for more interesting and unpredictable fights than the average fighting AI. You mainly fight these profiles in the Tekken dojo mode. Here, you move from dojo to dojo, fighting your way to the top of each one by beating these ghost profiles. The game comes with plenty of ghosts already present, but you can also record your own play to make your own ghost and then share it with your friends locally. You can also get online and download packs of ghost players for use in the single-player game, which is cool. Getting online also allows you to upload your ghosts for use by other players. It's a shame that there isn't any online combat, but considering that the Tekken series has yet to go online on any platform, it's not an altogether surprising omission.

In most of the game's modes, you earn money for winning fights. You can take those funds and use them to customize the look of your characters, much like in Tekken 5 or Virtua Fighter 4. There are plenty of pieces and colors to purchase, and they range from standard changes, like new hairstyles and glasses, to weird stuff, like a dog that clings to the back of Paul's gigantic haircut. Your ghosts carry these items, so you can give them a custom look before you send them out into the world to do your devious bidding.

The game contains a lot of solid music that plays while you're fighting, and the theater mode serves as a sound test, letting you listen to any of the music at any time. Additionally, the game has the same sound effects that Tekken 5 had, which makes the hits sound nice and hard, though the relative lack of bass on the PSP's stock speakers means they don't deliver quite as well as a set of good headphones will.

With plenty of modes to mess with and the promise of ghost exchanging, Tekken: Dark Resurrection is a long-lasting game that impressively delivers quality 3D fighting to the PSP. It makes smart additions while retaining everything that makes the Tekken series so popular in the first place. Fans of portable fighting games can't go wrong with this one.

Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion XL Review

Punch Time Explosion XL doesn't just take inspiration from Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series. Rather, it's as if Dexter, Samurai Jack, and a bunch of their Cartoon Network buddies staged an invasion to oust Mario, Link, and the rest of the Smash Bros. gang from the land of zany multiplayer brawlers and claim the territory as their own. The Cartoon Network crew makes a spirited effort, and they give Punch Time Explosion plenty of personality. But once the superficial and short-lived pleasure of seeing Blossom and Ben Tennyson battle each other in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends wears off, the shallow combat and frustrating platforming quickly grow tiresome. Though this updated version for consoles adds a few new modes and a number of new playable characters and stages to those featured in the original 3DS release, these additions don't make the gameplay any more exciting.

Like the games that it imitates, Punch Time Explosion XL is a fighting-focused party game in which up to four characters clobber each other on a 2D plane. There are a total of 26 playable characters; eight of these, including fan-favorite Johnny Bravo, are new to this version. As you take damage, a number displayed as a percentage increases, and the higher this number gets, the farther you're liable to go flying when hit. You lose a life when you're knocked from the stage or fall from it. Each character has standard attacks and a number of signature moves at his or her disposal, as well as a special attack that can be performed once a meter is full. A variety of weapons--flyswatters, magic wands, and so forth--spawn frequently, and if you're quick enough to grab them before an opponent does, they can significantly increase your power. In addition, special items show up that, when collected, summon non-playable Cartoon Network characters like Panini and Valhallen to lend you a hand for a short time.

The playable characters exude all the charm of their TV selves; Flapjack's absent-minded, goofy grin is infectious, and Buttercup's glare tells you she means business. But a small number of voice samples that repeat much too frequently make the game's sound design grate; hearing Ben Tennyson exclaim "I should have picked a flying alien!" for the umpteenth time as he's sent soaring off the field in defeat may push you to turn the voices off altogether.

The environments in which you do battle contribute to the craziness. One arena has you fighting on the rooftops of Townsville while a giant robot smashes the buildings under your feet. Another finds you in the mouth of a giant whale who sometimes belches huge amounts of water and dead fish into the sea, threatening to expunge you as well. The result of all this is a chaotic game in which the unpredictability and zaniness generate some short-term fun as you discover what happens on the various stages and what the various items and supporting characters do. But whether you're playing against CPU opponents or friends, this chaos also makes it difficult to take much satisfaction in victory; so much happens all the time that the ultimate outcome seems as dependent on chance as on skill. You can opt to play with fewer items or no items at all, but stripping away these distractions only makes it more clear that the underlying combat is shallow and that attacks have no sense of impact. Characters tend to come together and dish out their attacks willy-nilly until one is sent flying.

XL has a few modes that weren't in the original 3DS release. Arcade mode lets you compete in a series of brawls against computer-controlled opponents. It sometimes pits you against overwhelming odds--you may need to fight all three Powerpuff Girls at once, for instance--and these battles are more frustrating than fun. As in so many fights in the game, victory here is at least as much about luck as it is about skill. PTE mode and Drones mode put the focus on something other than clobbering each other. In the former, the winner is the player who collects the most energy cubes; in the latter, it's the player who destroys the most robotic enemies. But you'll likely still spend much of your time in these modes fighting your opponents to prevent them from accomplishing their goals, so these variations don't significantly change or improve upon the Standard mode.

Punch Time Explosion is at its best in Story mode, but even here it has some serious problems. An evil force is corrupting the universes of numerous Cartoon Network characters, providing a fine excuse for the Powerpuff Girls, Numbuh One, Dexter, and a bunch of other CN stars to band together and battle evil. The enthusiastic and funny narration by a CN voice-over guy who just wanted to relax and enjoy some cartoons on his day off lends the story an authentic Cartoon Network soul. Platforming takes priority over punching here, and bounding across chasms and over hazards with each character's double jump is pleasant enough. Or at least it usually is; some sections crank up the challenge in ways that only result in frustration. For instance, at one point you must make your way across a series of floating barrels that have a tendency to spin when you land on them, making it overly difficult to get your footing and make the leap to the next barrel. What makes this and situations like it doubly irritating is that losing all of your lives often results in a significant setback, requiring you to repeat minutes of easy gameplay to get back to the tricky bit.

Your side-scrolling escapades are also frequently put on hold when you're required to defeat a number of small-time bad guys or a single, more powerful cartoon character. These turn out to be some of the worst moments of Punch Time Explosion's Story mode, since they can almost always be won by repeating a specific signature move over and over. On occasion, you're required to protect a character as you defeat 25 enemies, a situation that encourages you to rely on this tedious but effective approach to knock the bad guys away from the clueless and vulnerable character you must keep safe.

Other diversions also crop up from time to time in the form of basic turret shooting sequences, mine cart levels, and the like, and these are more welcome, preventing the platforming from growing stale. New in Punch Time Explosion XL is the opportunity to tackle Story mode with up to three friends, playing locally. Of course, sharing the adventure with friends makes it more enjoyable, but the game doesn't always make the experience an accommodating one. If one player runs out of lives, he or she may be sitting things out for several minutes.

Frustratingly, many of the playable characters and battle stages are locked at the start, so there's a good chance you'll need to sink in some time before being able to beat up your friends with your favorite character or in your favorite Cartoon Network locale. Since the gameplay gets old fast and the characters are the game's greatest asset, it's disappointing that so many of them are unavailable from the beginning. Punch Time Explosion has a host of cool characters, but without the support of exciting gameplay, their presence can only benefit the game so much. This XL version is crammed with even more fan service than the original, but it still fails to create an enjoyable experience that makes the most of its terrific cast.