Katsuhiro Harada has shared his shocking opinion on making a Tekken Classic Collection.
In a new interview with The Gamer, Harada was asked about Capcom’s recent success in greenlighting a series of game collections for Capcom’s fighting games. After releasing Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection in 2018, Capcom launched a series of Capcom Fighting Collections, one dedicated to the games they made with Marvel Comics.
While Capcom has seen success bringing back their prodigious fighting game library, they aren’t the only game developer in a position to do so. Harada, of course, represents Namco in this case. But SNK, Sega, Arc System Works, even the likes of Konami and Tecmo Koei have some plum fighting game franchises that they could bring back if they wanted.
It’s only natural to ask these game companies why they haven’t joined Capcom’s momentum in making these game collections yet. Harada’s answer to this question, however, was surprisingly tough on the franchise that he has stewarded throughout all these years. Harada said this:
“It’s different for [2D] fighting games because 3D fighting game players tend to play the latest installment. Starting from early on, it was polygon character models that really pushed the edge of graphics at the time. 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, they don’t seem to age graphically that much. And that’s not the main reason people played it in the first place.”
Michael Murray, who is currently a game designer for the Tekken franchise, was on hand to translate Harada’s comments. He shared his own opinion on the matter:
“If it’s a drastically different gameplay change, like a Tag 2 compared to 7 or 8, maybe that’s something I would probably pick up and play for a little bit. Or maybe the Tekken Force mode or Devil Within or something like that.
But I wouldn’t even see myself picking up Tekken 3 and playing against friends for an extended period of time. So yeah, there is a difference we feel between the 3D fighters and 2D fighters in that respect.”
While we’re sure Harada and Murray are looking at the financial performance of past Tekken games when they made this assessment, we don’t know if they see the other aspects to Capcom’s fighting game collections. If Namco has doubts on the viability of making these game collections now, Capcom also had those worries.
Capcom also experimented on different ways of reviving their old games, making both a Capcom Arcade Cabinet and Capcom Arcade Stadium in the span of a decade. If there’s an impetus to reviving old games now, it would precisely be the momentum that Capcom is experiencing right now. If they wait too long, they won’t be able to capitalize on the trend Capcom recently started, and the same is true for Sega, SNK (who do have a Samurai Shodown Collection of their own), and other companies with big game franchises under their belts too.
We would agree that Tekken and Tekken 2 in particular haven’t aged well, but these collections are for more than competitive gamers looking to play these classics at tournaments. The broader market is actually older gamers, as these collections appeal to their nostalgia. They want to see the hilarious Kuma model in the original Tekken again, in all its poorly rendered glory.
Now, there would clearly be steeper technical issues in remastering multiple 3D games. However, we know that Capcom is bringing back some 3D titles in Capcom Fighting Collection 2. On top of that, Digital Eclipse put in the work to fix the notorious Jaguar game Fight For Life, and actually shipped it as a completed title for the first time in Atari 50.
So we know it’s possible to make a Tekken Classic Collection that would both be technically and financially feasible. Making such a venture successful would be a matter of setting a reasonable budget, and also setting reasonable expectations for their consumers.
We certainly hope Namco’s Tekken team, and perhaps also their Soul Calibur team, puts some consideration on these other points before they dismiss this idea. We don’t think the window of catering to the nostalgia cycle Capcom opened up is going to be open forever.
