Harada Plays Tekken Tag 2

You've got to respect a producer who is not afraid to play his own game on camera.

Namco News Announced

MarkMan indicated on Twitter that we can expect some good news for fighting gamers tonight at 1:30 AM Eastern. Information and a link to the upcoming liveblog can be found at SDTEKKEN.COM.

Update: Soul Calibur V was officially anounced, although it was already known to be in-development. Also announced was a full-length, CG Tekken movie, which is NOT an actual game. Though the movie looks interesting, there were no new game reveals.

Tekken X Street Fighter X The Apocalypse

Ono and Harada have such a humorous rapport going on, as you'll clearly see in this interview. I love Harada's concept for the dejected Dan to cross over to the Tekken side in a bid for respect.

SFxT Will Delete Your Tekken Save Data

Street Fighter x Tekken won't actually delete your saves. However, Ono joked in an interview with IGN that the only feature he could confirm for SFxT at this time was that when you install the game "all Bandai-Namco save data will be erased."

Another revelation from this interview was that the two crossover games are not based on SF4 and T6, respectively. They are also not the sequels to those games. The "Cross" games will be all-new products drawing from the entire Street Fighter and Tekken series. Harada said, "I'm sure the graphical look of the game might change and the gameplay elements... will be quite different."

Also, Ono stated that his goal of having his game out in two years was heavily criticized by his boss, Keiji Inafune. Because of this, he will try to have the game out sooner.

First Tekken x Street Fighter Images

The first ever images of anything Tekken X Street Fighter were shown this morning at GamesCom in Germany. The promo image above has got me really excited. You don't have to look too hard to see that both Devil Jin and Evil (or Satsui No Hadou) Ryu are present. Harada also showed off the first image of Ryu's in-progress model. He stressed that the model is very, very early and will change quite a bit before release.

Turn the Tweet Back: Hotel Shenanigans

Tomorrow at 8 a.m. (Eastern Time), Ono and Harada will challenge each other in the European debut of Street Fighter X Tekken, likely featuring Chun-Li and Nina. They've been steadily building their rivalry with taunts shot back and forth across Twitter. The story so far:

• Harada posted a picture of his hotel room. Ono expressed frustration that he was able to stay in a nice room (source). Harada claims that the Mishima Zaibatsu is sponsoring him financially.
• Ono used the pictures against Harada, ordering Street Fighter fans to attack the room. Harada complained that people were banging on his door. (source)
• Ono went to Harada's room and tossed a Hadouken at it:

• Harada countered by buying out Seth Killian:

• Seth gave Harada the location of Ono's room so that he could put him on notice, or rather put this notice on his door:

• Harada completed his revenge with an Electric Wind Godfist:

Update: It turns out that Seth was loyal, after all. He told Harada-san the wrong room number!

Turn the Tweet Back: Harada on Hadoukens

Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada has been very active on Twitter in the last two hours or so, and he's responding to a bunch of fan questions. I've summarized some of the more interesting replies below, but you can check out @Harada_TEKKEN for the original context.

• The lineup and its size [obviously] have not been determined yet.
• He "has an idea" of how to make projectiles work in Tekken x SF.
• Projectile characters will not have an advantage, due to sidestepping.
• He never said he was working on Tekken 7, just the next Tekken project.
• SF characters will be given new moves in Tekken x SF.
• His dream match-up is Heihachi vs Akuma.

Street Fighter X Tekken Panel

Watch the madness as it went down: the Tekken producer crashes the Street Fighter panel at Comic-Con and hands out copies of Tekken 6! Sadly, the blaring Fuerte theme obscures some of the conversation. Harada is actually taunting Ono at that point, telling him that Street Fighter languished for ten years, between Third Strike and SF4. "What's up with that, Ono?"

Video Games | Street Fighter X Tekken | SDCC 10: Panel Discussion HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Capcom vs Namco (and Namco vs Capcom)

Rumors abound about Saturday's announcement. The prevailinig rumor is something I predicted a while back, Capcom vs Namco. Actually, the rumor is that there are two games in development: Capcom vs Namco, developed by Capcom, produced by Ono, and running on the SF4 engine; and Namco vs Capcom, developed by Namco, produced by Harada, and running on the Tekken 6 engine.

Having Capcom characters in a Tekken game might actually make me want to play it, as I've never been much of a 3D fighter fan. What Tekken characters do you want to see in the SF4 engine? What Street Fighters (or other Capcom characters) would you like to see in Tekken? I'm already imagining what they'd look like...

(Poster by SRK member BossLogix.)

My picks for SF4 enigne: Heihachi, Jack, Lei Wulong, Bryan Fury, Xiaoyu

My picks for Tekken enigne: Elena, Alex, Zangief, Adon, Balrog, Juri, Dudley, Sean, Hinata, Roy Bromwell, Daigo Kazama

Ono's Next Game

SF4 Producer Yoshinori Ono continues teasing his next game. At EVO, he made a joke about working on Dark Void 2. Later, he said he'd received a call from his boss, Keiji Inafune, that he would have to discontinue work on that to work on a fighting game instead. He urged fans to be patient until an announcement at Comic-Con in two weeks.

He offered a hint via a picture he posted to Twitter, seen here. Apparently, that's a picture of Ryu to the left; however, the inkblot to the right is still a mystery. Judging by how friendly Ono was with Tekken Producer Harada-san at EVO, could we see a Namco vs Capcom?