So today we got the news that Katsuhiro Harada, the creator of the Tekken franchise, is leaving Bandai-Namco. For 30 years he's been a huge part of the project; while he's taken a bit more of a back seat in the past couple of years with the last 2 installments(I think some ways into Tekken 7 he went a little more background), he's still been with the company.
There's some news on it here:
For those who might not know me as well(I know I have gotten a few new followers over the months), I'm an avid fighting game fan and have been for a long time. While I haven't competed since the 90s(and even then, it was on a strictly, small-time local level -- you won't of heard of me unless you were in that very specific local scene, and even then, possibly not, since it was for a short time), I've been a fan and played them quite often. These days it's very strictly on a casual level; I had thought about maybe getting back into pushing it in the 20-teens, but I simply did not have the time to keep up with my life at the time being as busy as it was with family stuff. And keeping up with fighting games nowadays is difficult; while there are more resources, there's a much bigger scene, bigger stakes, and games that constantly get patched and you need to constantly stay on top of them to 'keep up.' I don't play them as often as I used to(though I own several fightsticks), and I do tend toward older games, but yeah. Some favorites of mine are the Virtua Fighter series(particularly 5FS), any SNK games(especially King of Fighters '98UMFE, XI, 2003 and XV), Garou: Mark of the Wolves and City of the Wolves, Tekken 5 DR and 6 BR, and 3rd Strike/Street Fighter Alpha 3. Guilty Gear Xrd is another goodie. There are many I like, but yeah, I do trend older toward the 'mostly solved' games, though even then I'm pretty casual.
Tekken 3 was that game of mine in the 90s though that I started to push hard, and Tekken itself gives me many fond memories. I met a lot of great people through this series, whom I am still friends with, and I have some big nostalgia of a bunch of us at the dorm riding in a big, white van for over an hour to get to the only Tekken 3 cabinet near us when it first came out.
But I think, honestly, this'll be good for Harada. I feel like the folks who said he started to 'fall into' his online 'heel' persona a little too much had something going(he was often cool I saw to folks who asked him genuine questions, but in other interviews he had the whole 'Don't ask me for shit' meme, which, to be fair, with the way FG fans love to nag about things online, I can't *completely* blame him for being sick of it, but the problem usually lies when you filter out ALL feedback, rather than just the angry screaming people), but especially after I saw his post on Itagaki after his sudden passing, he seemed devastated. I think the guy going free to do whatever he wants, wherever, will be really great for him.
As for Tekken? I admit I haven't really been into the series since about halfway through 7's run; as the game changes kept rolling in, it kept moving into a direction that I couldn't really gel with, and 8 was no exception. But given he was already somewhat in the background, it's hard to say if him stepping *all* the way out will have a heavy effect there or not.
But regardless, he left behind 30 years worth of fighting game legacy(Tekken is one of the biggest selling fighting games in the world, full stop, often even outselling Street Fighter even if the latter put the whole genre on the map way back), and a whole lot of great games already; there's some Tekken game for everyone I reckon, if you're into 3D fighters, depending on what you like out of your games. Mine are DR and BR; others could be different. It's done quite a bit in my life in terms of introducing me to some cool people, so for that it'll always remain a FG franchise near and dear to me, even if I stick to the older ones.
But I salute Harada anyway and wish him well on his future endeavors!
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