Wii U tech talk, Smash Bros. assurance from Harada, more
Tekken Director Katsuhiro Harada tackled a number of topics in a new interview with Nintendo Gamer. He was asked about Wii U development, the possibility of Tekken X Street Fighter on the console, and the next Smash Bros.
Harada’s comments can be found below.
Harada on whether or not Tekken 3D and now Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is the start of a strong relationship between Tekken and Nintendo…
“A while back we actually did work with Nintendo for Tekken Advance, but since I just kind of oversaw the general direction of the game I didn’t have a whole lot to do with Nintendo themselves. But starting roughly a year ago with the 3DS version of Tekken, that was when I started to have a lot more opportunities to meet them and talk with them, and now there’s obviously the Wii U version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and also the more recently announced collaboration we’re doing with them for the new Smash Bros. title.”
Harada on how it’s been developing for Wii U…
“The first thing we don’t really know at the moment is the release date of the hardware itself, then we’d be able to release more information about our game in particular. Regarding the hardware, the graphical processing capability is not bad at all. We’re actually able to do pretty much what we want in that regard. The one thing where we do kind of have to put our heads to good use is with the CPU itself – I guess because they’re trying to keep energy consumption pretty low we really do need to come up with some unique ideas to make good use of the CPU in order to attain the goals we need to for the game.”
Harada on whether or not the Mega Mushroom shown at E3 was a joke…
“Well, the Tekken team are the sort of team who doesn’t just do these things and leave them as jokes, we do actually follow through with them! The ‘Mushroom Mode’ clip did seem to be a pretty popular element of the presentation so obviously we will have that implemented in the game in some kind of fashion that I think people will be very surprised to see and enjoy a lot. But that’s all I can say at this moment.”
Harada on the likelihood of more Tekken games on Wii U, including Tekken X Street Fighter…
“That’s a very difficult question to answer right now because it seems like if I did people would take that and run with it. I guess I can say I’ve always wanted to provide various different ways for many different audiences to pick up our games and this is one approach to that, so hopefully we can continue with that aspect.”
Harada assuring fans that the next Smash Bros. is in good hands with Namco Bandai…
“Well I guess the main point is that obviously the director is still Sakurai-san and he’ll still obviously be the lead on the project. But as far as staff on our side at Namco Bandai, I guess our foreign fans are excited about the involvement of Tekken staff but if you look at it in general, including Japan, a lot of the staff involved have been known for working on many famous titles throughout our line-up both past and present, and these are all individuals who have worked directly in the development teams on various projects and have a lot of experience in their respective fields. So I think that it’s safe to say we can expect a really good title to come out of that.”
