Last weekend, the Red Bull Golden Letters event took place in London. The best Tekken players in the world competed against each other for first place in one of the most important tournaments in the series. While we couldn’t be there, we still had a chance to speak with series director Katsuhiro Harada and producer Michael Murray in a video interview about the past, present, and future of Tekken.
Heihachi Mishima, the series’ iconic antagonist, is not “completely dead” and he’s releasing on October 1 if you have the Year 1 Pass, or October 4 if not. Here at TheGamer,we weren’t that excited about the announcement–Reyna would have been a better fit for that available spot. But if you know anything about fighting game stories, characters rarely stay dead — for example, Street Fighter 6 recently got M. Bison back to the roster.
“We wanted it to look good and over the top,” explains Harada about Heihachi’s gameplay trailer. “As a result, a lot of fans were happy that he’s back, but some people were saying, ‘he looks quite strong’”. This is a sentiment that ourGeorge Foster shared during his time with the character. Harada tells me that he wanted Heihachi to be really strong and look cool because the new generation of Tekken players didn’t have the chance to really get to know him at his peak, as he was “only really strong in the first three games”. It’s early to say how strong the legendary Mishima will turn out to be, but I can’t deny that he’s looking better than he ever has in the series.
If you follow Harada on Twitter, you know he often speaks out about issues in the game industry, like its increasing development costs and longer cycles. Tekken 7 wasn’t the first time the base game was updated after launch — this is pretty common in the series and with fighting games in general — but the games have never had a post-launch cycle that lasted for many years, which presents new challenges.
“With Tekken 8, it’s quite different [from 7 and the rest],” he says. “Not only do we have to have the base game ready at launch, but then all the extra content that goes along with the console version. When people get their hands on it, it’s not just about the core mechanics first. It’s the core mechanics or story or whatever. I think it’s unique this time around for Tekken 8, but it’s also probably more difficult because of that.”
Harada and Murray go on to explain that they are happy with the current state of Tekken 8, and have received positive feedback from players and the press, but they are concerned about the adoption from old fans.
“Because of the need for a next-generation console, there are still a lot of people left in Tekken 7,” explains Harada. “For some reason, after 8’s tournament was held, the number of active players increased, but the number of active players in Tekken 7 also increased.” Murray agrees that he would love to see more players being able to get a current-gen console or gaming PC so more people can do the shift.
However, both Harada and Murray sound confident about what they have achieved with the game. “The current situation is that many people are imitating us,” says Harada. They speak about the features that Tekken 8 brought at launch, like the replay mode in which you can watch old matches and take control of your character to fix your mistakes or improve what you already did well. Or the AI enemy, which learns how to play against you after recording your own patterns and strategies. These are two features that were recently introduced in Street Fighter 6 with Terry’s patch. “I think we’re in a good place,” says Murray.
If there’s something that they would like to be different though, it has to do with the lack of direct rivals in the genre. When I expressed my opinion about living in a new golden age of fighting games, they kindly disagreed with me due to no other 3D fighting games being out on the market.
“In the end, it’s all about 2D fighting games,” explains Harada. “Major fighting games, as well as indie fighting games, are all in 2D. When we talk about fighting games, we tend to put them in one bag, but in fact, 3D fighting and 2D fighting are completely different genres. I’m really envious of the current situation of 2D fighting. Everyone has completely different ideas and competes in the same 2D fighting genre.”
Murray agrees: “It’s kind of hard to think of it as a golden age per se because there are a lot of fighting games currently. But if you look at them, most are series that have been around for 30 years or so, whether that’s Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or Tekken, with maybe Guilty Gear becoming pretty major recently. But if you look at it as a golden age or not, it’s hard to say because Tekken is the only 3D fighting game.”
EVO is one of the most important fighting game tournaments in the world, and Tekken always finds a spotlight in it. But during the 2024 edition, something important happened: the number of participants was the biggest in the event’s history, especially in Tekken — Tekken 7 got 1,580 players in 2023, while Tekken 8 received 4,646.
When asked about what they feel about this significant increase, Harada and Murray explain that it has to do with their hard work with the community. “To put it bluntly, the number of people playing the game took about 25 years to reach the international community,” explains Harada. “We’ve been providing a lot of support and maintaining the community. I think that’s what’s led us to this point and what’s led us to this success.”
“25 years ago we have been involved with communities around the world going directly to tournaments and interacting with them, finding ways to connect the fanbase around the globe to enjoy the game together,” says Murray. “So it’s not like it just exploded for Tekken 8, but [Harada] feels that it’s more a result of these actions and trying to build a community around the game that’s starting to pay off after many years of doing this.”
Some weeks ago, Capcom released theMarvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classicsbundle, which included many games that left a mark on the genre. These titles were either lost on older platforms or never released outside of arcades. Capcom has been trying to maintain its story with this and other collections, helping preserve video game history.
Neither Harada nor Murray sounded very excited about a hypothetical Tekken Collection. While it’s something that they would like to do, especially for specific titles that have unique mechanics like Tekken Tag Tournament 2 or modes like Tekken Force mode or Devil Within, reviving classic games is not a priority.
“It’s different for fighting games because 3D fighting game players tend to play the latest installment because, starting from early on, it was polygon character models that really pushed the edge of graphics at the time,” explains Murray. “So when you see it later on, it doesn’t look nearly as impressive as it used to. 2D fighting games, because they were just sprite characters and stuff, don’t seem to age graphically that much. And that’s not the main reason people played it in the first place. I wouldn’t even see myself picking up Tekken 3 and playing against friends for an extended period of time.”
Guest characters are an important part of many fighting games, and Tekken has a rich history of adding some interesting ones, such as The Walking Dead’s Negan or Noctis from Final Fantasy 15. Recently, SNK announced a collaboration between Fatal Fury and professional football player Cristiano Ronaldo, though we still don’t know what exactly it is.
When asked about what they thought of the announcement, both Murray and Harada thought it was a great move from SNK to bring an old series to the spotlight and try to gather as many new players as possible. However, with Tekken’s current success and sales numbers, they don’t feel like it’s something they need to do.
“If you think of guest characters in general, there’s two sides about it: ‘Is this something the hardcore fans are looking for?’ ‘Is this very valuable marketing-wise?’,” explains Murray. “And for us, we attempt to balance the two if we can as much as possible. For example, in Tekken, we’ve had offers in the past from some famous athletes like that. But in our case, when we thought, is that something our core audience would want? Or is it just a marketing appeal? We decided not to do it in some cases.
“But looking at Fatal Fury, it’s probably a good choice. And if [Harada] were the producer on Fatal Fury, he’d probably do the same thing. Because among older gamers like ourselves, it’s such a classic and well-known game. But among younger people, maybe not so much. To attempt to bring it back and make it more relevant to kids who don’t know that series. That might be a very good tool to do that.”
Speaking of bizarre characters and scenarios, some time agofans made a requestto turn Waffle House into a playable stage in Tekken. Harada asked about this on Twitter, and the response was wild. I asked him about what he feels about this now, and he told me a very interesting anecdote with another well-known fast-food brand.
“[The Waffle House meme] was really interesting and fans loved it, but it would have to be Chipotle’s house or something like that because we are in a very good relationship with Chipotle,” explains Harada. “Even if we were to do something in the future with Waffle House, it’s not something that we can accomplish on our own. It would have to be something that they’re interested in doing. Who knows? They have a brand to think of. Maybe they don’t think it goes well with their image.”
“[Harada] went to Kentucky Fried Chicken and tried to get Colonel Sanders,” says Murray. “Because he wanted that in Tekken. He said that they weren’t very open to the idea. [Sanders]appeared in games after that apparently. So maybe it was just him fighting against someone who was posing a problem for them. But it just goes to show how difficult these types of discussions are.”
Tekken 8 has only been out for nine months, and if we take into account 7’s eight-year life cycle, things are just getting started. While we wait for Heihachi to be released, Harada invites fans tocheck his Twitter campaign, in which he asks what character would be the last of the current season pass if it was leaked. I’ve already made my summoning circle for Tifa.
