Over the past few days, I’ve seen several articles and videos on the status of the ill-fated crossover fighter, Tekken x Street Fighter. We had already seen the fruits of the first crossover, Street Fighter X Tekken, which was a fun, if not over-the-top crossover title that didn’t get the attention it should have. Now with Tekken X Street Fighter, Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada had appeared in a video called Harada’s Bar, with him “saying” that the development on the title had stopped. In essence, it was dead in the water.
However, Harada took notice of all those articles and videos, and he’s not too happy. Apparently, what he said was not translated correctly, and what he actually said versus what everyone thinks he said are two different things.
You can see the translation in the video below at the 21:25 mark.
https://youtu.be/kRD5RVADauU
As seen above, the subtitle does mention that Tekken X Street Fighter was stopped. To which Harada is saying that the subtitle was completely wrong.
In Harada's Bar Radio: Part 1 (EN Sub) we prioritized ease of reading which made it possible to cover only about 1/3 of the nuance with subtitles. This allowed for some misunderstandings.
The original meaning and nuance were later detailed by Harada here: https://t.co/NcoGK9xNnz— Harada's Bar／はらだのばぁー (@HaradasBar) June 18, 2021
Harada mentions what exactly had happened during this segment and the actual status of Tekken X Street Fighter. The project isn’t dead but has been touched since it hit 30% and thus has been shelved. But it’s important to point out that shelved isn’t canceled, and there’s a possibility that Bandai Namco (and Capcom) could revisit it in the future.
It’s interesting, to say the least, but this did upset Harada. A character who has been known to voice his opinion and say whatever needs to be said. Those in the fighting game community are quite aware of the love/hate relationship that Tekken fans have with him. However, this is more than just a Harada thing.
While Bandai Namco is the developer of the Tekken X Street Fighter game, similar to how Capcom was the developer of Street Fighter X Tekken, both companies still need to be involved. Harada is still at Bandai Namco; however, his former counterpart Yoshinori Ono has since been removed from any Street Fighter development and ultimately left the company. Capcom has been quiet on the Tekken X Street front as well, leading anyone who was interested previously to think that the game wasn’t going to happen.
Whatever happens to the follow-up to Street Fighter X Tekken is anyone’s guess. Still, it’s nice to see that the game has been completely forgotten. Yet, something tells me that between Tekken 7’s continued DLC development and Tekken 8, rumors beginning to make the rounds. If Tekken X Street Fighter isn’t canceled, it’s going to be a long time before we actually see anything materialize.
This isn’t the first time that it was reported that Tekken X Street Fighter was dead, either. During an interview with Gamespot back in 2016, Harada went on record stating that Tekken X Street Fighter was on hold.
When we develop fighting games, we try to keep the core community in mind as well as the wider audience that wants to play these games,” he explained. “But currently the situation is with fighting games, you have Street Fighter V that just released–a lot of people are playing that fervently–and there’s a large crowd out there waiting or Tekken 7.
Honestly, I was looking forward to seeing Street Fighter characters in the Tekken or another 3D engine. The last 3D Street Fighter we received was Street Fighter EX, and going past that was seeing Akuma in Tekken 7. And he’s freaking amazing in there. We definitely could use to see more Street Fighter characters in 3D. But looks like that is a long way off.
What do you think? Is Tekken X Street Fighter canceled, or is Harada hopeful? Let us know in the comments.
