Tekken 8 Might Include More Guest Fighters From Capcom, SNK

In an interview with IGN, Katsuhiro Harada, the director of the Tekken series mentioned the possibility of bringing in more guest characters from other IPs once again for Tekken 8. There is a very high chance that we are possibly going to see other Capcom or SNK fighting game legends make their return with Tekken 8. 

When asked if he would consider bringing in more guest characters from other franchises for Tekken 8, Harada-san didn’t offer any concrete confirmation but mentioned that he and the team were very happy and satisfied with the response they got from the players for the guest characters and also mentioned:

“I brought up that working with Oda-san from SNK and how we had him on our panel at Comic-Con one year and that building those relationships is also a really cool part of working with other companies. It’s obviously something that we enjoy doing, and if the fans enjoy it, it’s something that we would consider again. That’s as far as we can go.”

Major Takeaways:

• Tekken 8 is likely to feature more guest characters from other fighting game franchises by CAPCOM and SNK.
• Intended to be the most visually impressive game in the series and a showcase for next-generation hardware.

The guest characters in Tekken 7 were one of the best parts of that game. The game launched with one of the most iconic characters in fighting game history, Akuma from Street Fighter. On a side note, Having Akuma in a Tekken game is a genius idea considering the Tekken series’ pedigree of iconic and memorable villains. 

Tekken 7 also had a ton of surprising guest characters not only from other popular fighting game franchises but other properties as well. Over the years the game received characters like Geese Howard from Fatal Fury and Negan from The Walking Dead TV series. Here’s hoping we can expect a similarly insane cast of guest characters for Tekken 8.

Tekken 8 was also recently announced early last month during the Evo Tekken tournament with the game showing a render of Kazuya Mishima with the title “Get Ready”. The game was finally properly shown during the Sony State of Play earlier this week with actual gameplay and screenshots. 

It appears that Tekken 8 is going to be setting yet another new benchmark for graphical fidelity in fighting games such as Tekken 1, Tekken 3, and Tekken Tag Tournament before it.

Harada-san himself confirmed in the interview that the visuals were something they were paying a lot of attention to as he believed their most successful entries drew their audience through their incredible graphical fidelity. 

Harada-san further mentioned,

“The graphics are something that we really focused on. And I know that sounds kind of trite, but if you look back at the franchise and see where it did well – like Tekken 3 on the PlayStation 1, maybe Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2 – there was the variety of modes and the gameplay that people liked, but an important aspect has always been the kind of graphics people can expect on new hardware. And not just from a certain segment of the community or audience, but from PlayStation fans in general, from casual players to hardcore fighting game enthusiasts. Everything was about the graphics at first.” 

And it’s proving to be true as Tekken 8 looks to be by far the most visually impressive fighting game on the market. Tekken 8 is coming soon on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Steam with no release date mentioned as of now.