Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada shared more about the creation of one of Tekken’s most beloved costumes, including internal discussions about the concept and whether it would be understood by foreign players.
This news came via Twitter in response to a cosplay of King’s beloved alternate costume from Tekken 3. The costume features the wrestler wearing a gray mask, t-shirt, shadowy blue pants, and white sneakers. Harada explained the background of his project in a long post.
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“This costume started with my idea in the 90s that 2P should wear the Armor King mask and be a Heel wrestler. Then… The artist assigned to the project uploaded the texture data with the kanji for “悪 (Heel/Evil/Villain)” initially as a joke. One day, when I ran the development test build and saw “Evil” written on the back of the KING, I laughed out clamorous.”
Harada continues: “The artist smiled and said, ‘See, this is Heel, right?’ He said. This solution was very popular with everyone on the development team, so we officially adopted it. I felt it was a bit unhappy to utilize only one kanji character, so I asked the artist, I asked him to put “Mishima Heavy Industries” in the design and that design was completed.
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Harada then goes into detail about internal concerns about the design’s recognition abroad, particularly regarding the Kanji on the back. “However, the question that crossed my mind for a moment was whether this “kanji for evil” would be understood in countries other than Japan. In the 1990s, language localization awareness was still very restricted, so I left it as it was. At that time, arcade machines were still operating around the world, and TEKKEN 3 was released in arcades around the world, but one of the most common questions in the letters (real ones, not emails) we received was: “What does the King do?” back? – was the question then. Namco’s sales team pointed out that it would be hard for people overseas to read, but I believe it’s because it was written in kanji that it became an iconic costume (at least that’s how I like it). think).”
This is a nice piece of retro information about Tekken’s frosty history. Ultimately, Harada turned out to be right, as this costume is one of the most cosplayed costumes in the series. You can even buy entire outfits inspired by this model online!
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