Influence

The Tekken games are popular within the martial arts community thanks primarily to the fact that most of the characters' fighting techniques can be found in real life martial arts. However, there are questions as to the accuracy of the style labels ascribed to certain characters. For example, in previous releases of the game, the character Paul Phoenix is listed accurately as fighting using integrated martial arts based on judo, despite judo not generally allowing punching and kicking, especially in competition. Similarly, the character Marshall Law is listed as being a practitioner of "martial arts", which is not a specific discipline. Similarities exist between Marshall Law and Bruce Lee, including their fighting style, Jeet Kune Do as well as appearance. The misunderstanding concerning Marshall Law's "martial arts" is commonly attributed to the fact that in the manual for the American PlayStation release of Tekken 2, the translator for the manual missed a small pun where Marshall Law practiced 'Marshall arts', a reference to his own name. Other Tekken characters also draw heavily from real life action heroes, such as Lei Wulong and Craig Marduk, video game analogues of Jackie Chan, and large wrestlers/mixed martial artists, such as Bill Goldberg, Nathan Jones, and Bob Sapp. Namco themselves have stated that the styles in Tekken are not supposed to accurately represent real styles, but merely give the impression of them. Paul Phoenix, King (albeit through two different identities), Nina Williams, Yoshimitsu and Heihachi Mishima have been playable characters in all Tekken games, while Lei Wulong first appeared as a playable character in Tekken 2 and has since shown up in all subsequent games. Kazuya Mishima and Lee Chaolan are playable characters in all Tekken games with the exception of Tekken 3, which Kazuya only appears or is mentioned in various cinematics. Anna Williams is playable in all Tekken games except Tekken 4. A member of the Law and Chang family have also been playable in every Tekken game.
Apart from Yoshimitsu, Heihachi Mishima and Lars Alexandersson, there are many crossovers between Tekken and the Soul series, such as King's mask available for custom characters in Soulcalibur III, and Ivy's hairstyle for Anna in Tekken 5. Yoshimitsu and Heihachi, being originally Tekken characters, obtained many new moves when brought to the Soul series. In later Tekken games, some of these attacks were added to their moves lists. Lars also appears in in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 as a special guest character.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekken