While the mainline Tekken series has always been incredibly popular since it first debuted on the original PlayStation, its spin-offs – Tekken Tag Tournament and its sequel – have also been considered fan-favourites. This has often led fans of the franchise to ask Bandai Namco, and particularly series producer Katsuhiro Harada, about a potential third entry in the Tekken Tag Tournament series. In an interview with Destructoid, Harada said that a standalone Tag Tournament game is highly unlikely at this point.
Rather, Harada spoke about how the spin-off series is likelier to return in the form of a game mode for either the current game – Tekken 8 – or a hypothetical mainline sequel. “It’s quite difficult because, you know, Tag is something I’ve always thought of more recently, and [I feel] like it should be some kind of mode within a Tekken 9 or 8 or whatever you want to call it,” said Harada through a translator.
It largely comes down to the fact that the tag fighter sub-genre has become quite popular these days, and Harada isn’t sure if there is room in the market for a new standalone title. He said that “if we start now [to make a Tekken Tag Tournament 3] by the time that they’re no longer popular, that’s when Tag Three would come out.”
Harada went on to note that, if a new standalone Tekken Tag Tournament were to be developed, it would be more likely to be worked on by a new generation of game developers, saying that it probably wouldn’t happen in his “working lifetime”.
“We have so many more moves than a typical 2D fighter,” he explained. “So much more work is involved in trying to do that with a 3D game…It’s probably a ways off if it were to happen, and so probably not in my working lifetime. So that’s something that the next generation can decide.”
Interestingly, Harada also spoke about a crossover game that was long believed to have essentially disappeared – Tekken X Street Fighter. The game would have been Bandai Namco’s follow-up to Capcom’s own Street Fighter X Tekken from all the way back in 2012. While the title was confirmed to be in development at the time, work on it had seemingly been quietly dropped.
“It’s hard to say if that’s even a thing,” said Harada when asked about Tekken X Street Fighter. “I mean, it depends on what people are wanting as well. That said, I would like to show people what we already have. That would be cool if we could do that. We were 30 percent into development, so fingers crossed.”
It is worth noting that Tekken 7 did get something of a crossover with the Street Fighter franchise thanks to Akuma being one of the core parts of its roster. Since then, the Tekken franchise, and especially Tekken 8, have featured several crossover characters from across various other franchises, including Fatal Fury and Final Fantasy.
As for Tekken Tag Tournament, the last game in the series was released back in 2011 on the PS3, Xbox 360, and eventually the Wii U. In the meantime, check out our review of Tekken 8. Also check out the details of the next additions to the Tekken 8 roster, Armor King and Miary Zo.
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