At the recent contest in London, Lim “Ulsan” Soo-hoon from South Korea won first place, beating Jae-hyun “CherryBerryMango” Kim in the grand final.
They were joined by players from the USA, Japan and Europe, demonstrating the global popularity of Tekken.
Harada-san has been working on the series for 30 years, and says the competitive scene really kicked off around the release of Tekken 7.
He tells Asian Network his mother cried when he first told her he wanted to pursue a career in video games, but now his family is “quite proud” when they see him in magazines.
“They’re like, ‘wow, you’re actually doing something with it, that’s good,” he says.
Harada-san says he’s glad Tekken “has continued for a long time and we’ve been able to come this far”.
But he does confess to being “a bit sad” that it’s the “only remaining major 3D fighting game franchise”.
“It would be more interesting if there were other rivals, right?” he says.
