Tekken celebrates its 30th anniversary and we talked to Bandai Namco about the long journey

Gamereactor: So, Mr. Harada, thank you for taking your time with us. You were involved in the first Tekken from the very beginning. What did you think at the time? Did you ever realise that history was in the making?

Harada: So, before the PlayStation, the console that everyone was used to, Namco had actually been developing for System 11 with the PlayStation architecture as a base. But at the time, that's not when we thought we were going to be something that went down in fighting game history.

It was more towards the later 90s, I guess, after the PlayStation, that we actually started thinking, we have something here and we need to try our best to try to eclipse Virtua Fighter. At the time, the titles that were seen as legendary were more from your bag here [he pointed at my bag, having a huge Sega logo printed on it], Sega. They had not just Virtua Fighter, but the whole Virtua series of different things as well. Those were seen as kind of what might be the legendary titles at the time.

Speaking of Virtua Fighter, is that something you would consider you had inspiration from when you were making Tekken?

Harada: There was a lot of tug-of-war with the technical staff. Some of the racing game guys from Namco went to Sega. On the other hand, the Virtua Fighter staff, about four people at first, were pulled out of Sega by Namco. After that, on the contrary, they were pulled out of Namco by Square. Virtua Fighter, in a way, was a mix of some of the staff.

So, there was a lot of staff moving around at the time. During that era, I guess you could say that we were close with some of the people from Sega on our team. But also, it's not like we were on bad terms with Sega or anything like that. It's actually the opposite. The Virtua Fighter team around Tekken 4 approached us to work together on the network component behind both of those games.

Now that we know that Heihachi is back in Tekken 8... somehow more evil than ever. What was the thought process? Did you ever consider leaving him out from the game?

Harada: Well, you know, originally the idea was to have Heihachi not die per se. But during the development of Tekken 8, I told the director, Kohei "Nakatsu" Ikeda, but also the staff in charge of making the CG movies, et cetera, to make it look convincing, that the actual conclusion to the battle between Kazuya and Heihachi happened. As such, the team, the way they portrayed it, was more convincing than I had originally envisioned. So, it was more... it was always in the plan, to think of a way to convincingly bring him back.

When you're creating a Tekken game, which obviously is AAA, I assume it's a really huge step, and so how does this process start? And when do you decide it's time for something new and to leave the last game behind?

Harada: Recently, the past couple of Tekkens, it's mostly both of us [Harada and game designer Michael Murray] and more recently the director, since we're closely watching the community and how they're playing the game and enjoying it and what they like and what they want to see from it. We kind of gather our thoughts on what we would like to do for the next instalment by seeing that and thinking deeply about it.

So, there's that kind of development driven side to it, but then there's also the corporate side about the company and what they want, how high their expectations are for a new instalment and how much money they can give us for development in relation to how much they expect to sell in that whole corporate side of it. So, both of these have to kind of work together quite well to provide the perfect timing to release a new instalment.

When you decide, okay, we're going to do a new Tekken, how much time do you need before you have a finished product?

Harada: In the old days, it was only one or two years. It started without the arcade version, so about four years now.

What do you think of the new and easier controls so far, has it worked out well?

Harada: We kind of had plans for this around even during the Tekken 7 days, but it actually came about during Tekken 8. And it was thought to be, since it's quite different between 3D and 2D... Street Fighter is famous for their modern controls, I think is what they call it. But it's different than ours, because ours you can change on the fly at any time during the match by pushing the LB button. So, the way the players are able to use it is quite different. And it's kind of envisioned that we want people to become very proficient at their chosen character at some point but it's a good way to kind of get them up to speed on how the basics of the character should work before they then go into more detail and probably not use it.

If you want to pick up a character with friends to play, I don't have to know the whole hundred moves and all the different combos and everything I can put on a special style and still have a whole lot of fun and play the way the character is supposed to be played for some of my sub-characters, et cetera. So, it's great for a variety of different players.

So, you're very satisfied with how it has worked out for you?

Harada: Yes, and also it's been updated as we could do a lot more with it. But even post-launch after Tekken 8, many things have been added to the special style, like in combination with directional inputs, you have more choices in moves. Some of the combos are case-sensitive, as in you can slam them into the ground and break the ground, or you can do the wall breaking move. There's different combo branches and so on now. All these kind of things have been tweaked after launch. So, it's something that we continue to optimise.

Besides these easier controls, how have you made sure that Tekken is a game for everyone? Like for esports players and for casual gamers, as this is quite unique for Tekken and Soul Calibur to offer this.

Harada: Yeah. I think the impression you get when you play is important, but I also think it's important to know how attractive the information is before you play. I'm just saying that obviously we put a lot of work into how these different types of players can pick up the gameplay. But the most important part actually starts before then. When they're watching their favourite streamer or player show the game off online or at a tournament or whatever, it looks entertaining and it looks like over the top and it looks like something that many people would want to pick up and try themselves. So, we put a lot of effort into the cinematics and the effects and everything to tempt people to try the game out. So, that's probably the most important step of it.

It was 12 years between Tekken Tag Tournament and the sequel and now it's been 13 years since Tekken Tag Tournament 2. What is the status of this spinoff series?

Harada: So, it's not like it was planned to have the Tag series appear at a certain 12-year cycle or anything like that. It was just that originally when the first Tag came out, you know, Tekken was a much more simpler franchise back then. Way fewer characters than we have now on the roster. All the different gameplay systems and all these things that have been added since then have made Tekken, the base game, much more complex. It would be quite difficult to make a new instalment in the Tag series that many people would be able to enjoy, because, you know, the top tier players who are competing worldwide and who really spend so much time on Tekken and are at like the highest level of the player base really love that series, but for people who are more casual it's a much more difficult game to pick up and play. So, it's not something we're currently really thinking of, because the direction we're going into is to try to have as many people enjoy the game as possible, but at the same time, maybe if we were to add a new idea, rather than Tag, it would be something like a team battle, or some other twist on the current format of the game.

Tekken has a very diverse cast of characters, why have this been so important for the series?

Harada: I think the character line-up is the value of fighting games. If possible, I'd like to release a game with 100 characters, but the game itself will be very complicated. The strategy will be difficult, so there is a limit, but the charm of the character itself is the charm of this game. I guess you could say that fighting games are kind of character games in themselves because they're the most important element in a game and that... For example, if you take a game like Samurai Showdown... Spirits, I'm not sure what they call it in Europe, I think it's Showdown. The main character is Haomaru, obviously, but maybe, for example, Murray and myself, we both like Kiwagami Genjirou a lot better than Haomaru. So, it depends on who you are, where you're from, and what your tastes are. People have so many diverse tastes and the type of character that they wanna play. So, maybe it's an anime-based character, maybe it's someone who's very strong and muscular. Maybe it's a very evil, bad character like who often appears in Tekken. When you're trying to make a character that really speaks to so many different people in different areas around the world, it just ends up being a very diverse cast like we have. And so, obviously, if it were possible resource-wise to make 100 different characters to appeal to such a wide audience, that would be awesome. There's the balancing of the game and all that and the work that goes into making these characters unique, it's just not realistic. That said we do have quite a line-up, we think.

If you would lend a character to another series like Street Fighter or something outside of Bandai Namco, which character would you consider is the best representative of Tekken?

Harada: We were just saying that Heihachi is probably the obvious choice, right, because he's such an iconic character in the series and he embodies so much from the background story and what makes Tekken. His silhouette is also obviously very recognisable and so he's very easy to be the perfect choice to represent Tekken. But Reina would fit as well, you know, being a a very strong female character, quite evil too, as people seem to like this from the Tekken cast. She's a very good modern choice outside of Heihachi.

You have had a couple of guest characters yourself in Tekken franchise lately, but which one of these have been your personal favourite?

Harada: It's probably Geese Howard because he was just something that we really wanted to try putting in Tekken and everyone on the dev team really just loved playing and everyone was fond of the character from the start. It was just a great vehicle to accomplish a lot of things in Tekken.

Murray chips in:

Murray: Yeah, I'm... I would have picked Geese as well, but if I were to pick a different character, I would say Negan, because he was such a surprise, and it turned out that so many people liked him. We were both huge fans of The Walking Dead, and when we were thinking about you go from Akuma to Geese, and then we're trying to find someone who's even a worse person than these people, how do you find them? And Negan was the perfect answer at the time. And then also working with Jeffrey Dean Morgan was a very big thing for me, I did the actual voice directing for him. And I said like say it like this and I gave an example and he said you actually do a good Negan impression. That was one of the highlights of my career. It's like wow that's so cool to be able to do that. But I was glad to see a lot of Tekken players liked him and ended up using him quite often in Tekken 7.

May I ask you a final question? If the Harada-san sitting here today could give advice to the younger Harada starting to work on Tekken all those years ago, what would it be?

Harada: I would say, buy Bitcoin. Just kidding, just kidding. It is at 100k at the moment, so not a bad choice though.

When I was young, I actually thought it would be nice to continue the series for 12 or 13 years. But it went on longer than I thought. So, really put a lot of effort into the game setting and the character settings and the spec. And you really need to make sure that you leave all the documentation and back up all the data as well, because those things have not happened as much as they should have in the past.