Tekken 6: Your Questions Answered

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Namco Bandai recently gave CVG readers the chance to field their Tekken questions to series director Katsuhiro Harada.

You quizzed enthusiastically, and after picking the most hardcore queries - and sieving through the liberal costume-related ones - Harada kindly got back to us.

A simple one really, Who's your favourite Tekken character? (and why?) - Flash501

Harada: It'd have to be Jin Kazama and Heihachi Mishima.

Jin has served as a main "hero" character for the longest period of time in the series; it wouldn't be going overboard to say that the tale of Tekken is written from his perspective.

His story -- a young, innocent kid gradually corrupted by the evils of society, the pursuit of power, and his own desires, eventually becoming one of the greatest villains the world has ever seen -- is something I've been crafting over the past ten years or so.

With Heihachi, meanwhile, a lot of focus has been placed on his unique look, but personally I'm more fascinated by his life philosophy. He plays a villain role in the series, but he's a very human character. I think he's a perfect portrayal of the evil that lurks in mens' hearts, a uniquely human type of evil that's far more hideous than any made-up monster or demon.

Do you study a lot of martial art videos and martial artists? - GinSin

Harada: I've studied a great deal of martial artists, and videos of them in action, as I've worked on the series. I've also attended a lot of competitions myself, and I often get a chance to speak with competitors and listen to their stories. Of course, we also go pretty far beyond what real martial arts and its practitioners are capable of within the games; in that aspect much of the series is fictional.

How do you feel Tekken will do up against games like Modern Warfare 2 over here in the west? Do you think fighting games have a future in this part of the world? - Wiikii007

Harada: Before I answer that, let me say first that I personally love the Call of Duty series. I've been a PC gamer since the very early years of that scene, and even today I have a super high-end PC -- liquid-cooled, the whole bit -- that I play games on.

I do think the fact that Tekken is an established franchise that sells X million copies worldwide with each release puts it in the same echelon as a lot of Western games. The Japan game industry had a "golden age" in the past, but even back then, starting around 12 years ago, I had been sounding alarm bells because I saw that Western developers were going to overtake us someday.

We all know now that Japan was late in the high-end PC market, the online-game era, and the whole concept of reusable game engines. Since the Xbox 360's launch, things have sadly turned out pretty much how I predicted they would.

Still, despite the fact that people claim the fighting genre will disappear or gradually fade away, my impression is that it's actually doing pretty well for itself. How else to explain the successes we've seen with Street Fighter IV, Mortal Kombat and Soulcalibur on the PS3 and 360, after all?

The Tekken series has sold over 34 million copies up to Tekken 5, but it's astounding how much sales have risen in Europe over the years. At this point, Europe accounts for over 50% of total sales. It's hard to say what the future holds, of course, but I think it's safe to say that no matter what era we're in, we're always going to need a genre of competitive, man-to-man games.

By the way, I love shooting up other players in FPSes, too.

Can we hope that all the loopholes in the Tekken storyline (is Jun alive or not, her relationship with Kazuya, what happened to Kunimitsu etc) will be cleared in the T6 story? - CorpseThrust

Harada: Revealing every single aspect of Tekken's story is probably not going to happen. A lot of the story (and the individual episodes it's composed of) are deliberately kept vague, so I'd like to avoid clearing up everything within Tekken 6 alone.

What I can say is that as far as the development team is concerned, only two people in the story are officially, absolutely dead: the original King (killed by Ogre), and the original Armor King (killed by Marduk). In the world of Tekken, the only characters that actually seem to die real deaths so far are pro wrestlers.

Will there be many more customizations in the console version than there were in the arcades? -Ryuhza

Harada: The character customize options will be exactly as they were in the arcade, but since there's such a huge variety of customization items available in Tekken 6 (for all 40 characters to boot), I think gamers will have more than enough to work with. There are a few additions to the console version, though -- clothing from the TapouT lineup, as well as costumes from famous Japanese manga artists [i.e. CLAMP].

Why are all the characters unlocked from the beginning? Don't you think this will take away from many people's replayability? - Tekken._.PS3

Harada: First off, every Tekken game is released first as an arcade game, then as a console title. It would be a bit unfair to players if we re-locked characters that have always been available in the arcade original.

The biggest reason, though, is the competitive nature of the fighter genre compared to others. A lot of players don't like using unlockable characters because they take longer for everyone to get to grips with compared to the default character set; we get a lot of strong opinions along those lines.

Of course, that doesn't mean the game has zero unlockables. In the Scenario Campaign mode, you choose a character after completing the tutorial; as you proceed through the story, you'll be able to use other characters in the mode as well. Every character has his or her own selection of power-up equipment to collect; there's a ton of volume there. The ending movies for each character are another type of unlockable, too.

What, if anyone, real-life Kyokushin fighters are Jin and Kazuya based on? - GinSin

Harada: There is a model for Jin, but no one model in particular for Kazuya. The Mishima-style karate that Kazuya and Heihachi practice doesn't exist in real life. Even Jin's karate isn't completely real; a lot of his moves were created by the Tekken project staff.

Why do Eddy and Christie get their own character slots while poor Panda and Kuma have to share? - The Kool Kid

Harada: Once upon a time, Kuma was a Japanese bear if Player 1 selected him and a polar bear if Player 2 chose him. Panda came along as sort of a joke in Tekken 3, but indeed, we have gotten requests to separate Panda from Kuma. It may be a bit of a tall order to up the number of character slots, but I'll put it under consideration.

This being the 10th year anniversary of Tekken TAG Tournament, can we expect to see a release of the Arcade version of Tekken TAG for the XBLA and PSN like you did with Soul Calibur? - Oz80

Harada: Wow! I just realized it's been ten years; that makes me feel really old! That brings back the memories; I remember coming up with the basic structure of the game in five minutes (seriously!). There aren't any plans for a 360 or PS3 release right now, but we definitely get a lot of requests to do something with TAG again.

Will there be a feature where we can take screenshots in-game? - SonKitty

Harada: It's not implemented in the game, but it could be possible with the PS3 and its firmware.

Will Jun Kazama make an appearance in any shape or form in Tekken 6, or any future game? - Deebo

Harada: Jun Kazama is currently missing (not to mention pretty advanced in years), but the possibility is always there.

Will there be a chance of there being guest characters from other fighting games like Street Fighter or Dead or Alive? - ColinMac93

Harada: It's always a bit difficult when you get different companies involved with each other; it's hard to push it through even if all the creators on both sides are for it. It's not that there's zero chance of it, though.

Speaking personally, I'd love to work on a title that takes all the fighting games and pits them against each other in some sort of ultimate final battle. I've spoken along those lines to the media a lot over the past 13 years -- "I'd like to make Virtua Fighter vs. Tekken," that sort of thing -- and nowadays I go out drinking with the VF team sometimes.

Tomonobu Itagaki, the Dead or Alive guy, went to the same university as me and we've drank together in the past, too. I actually have an invite from the Street Fighter IV guys coming up, come to think of it. Some sort of "dream match" game would be great to make someday.

Will we ever have a Tag mode again? - Melee_Sovereign

Harada: As mentioned earlier, we get a ton of requests for it. I'm going to have to think about it a bit.

Are there things you've discovered in making this game that you'd like to implement in TEKKEN 7? - Kain Carver

Harada: Oh, there are a lot of ideas...I can't say too much yet, though. For example, we've got a new idea for a facial-expression system for when people get punched and so forth. It'd be a real thrill to see in action, so I definitely want to do that.

Andy Robinson