Retro Gaming Australia

Namco’s Harada on the origin of Tekken’s mini games

by on Aug.10, 2011, under News


One of the cooler aspects of Tekken 3 were the bonus games that the development team included – Tekken Force, a side-scrolling beat em up and Tekken Ball, a take on volleyball with Tekken moves. The tradition continued into later games in the series, which brought us Tekken Bowl (recently released for free on iDevices).

In an interview with Siliconera, series producer Katsuhiro Harada discusses the origin of these mini games. “The starting point for Tekken Force is we wanted to have Tekken characters side-scroll through stages and pick up meat to replenish health,” he says.

Harada states that Tekken Ball’s origins are a little more complex. “Tekken Ball was first designed as a simulator to help people practice air juggles. The original idea was to hit the ball and juggle it to a basket, sort of like basketball. It didn’t go how I imagined and I was kind of frustrated. If it’s not going to be good, I thought I should make it into a versus game.”

On Tekken Bowl, Harada says “Since we used a ball in Tekken Ball, we thought about using one in other ways. At first, we thought about pinball, but we thought we would rather have two characters taking turns so bowling would be better suited. That’s how we settled on bowling. Now that you’re hearing this you can tell how much we listened to fans at that time. We pretty much made what we wanted. [Laughs.]”

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