The current issue of Retro Gamer celebrates the 30th anniversary of Namco’s Tekken and interviews chief producer Katsuhiro Harada and producer Michael Murray. The iconic series is broken down into its key components, from its cast of colourful characters to its hard-hitting game mechanics, and Harada is on-hand to guide you through its 30 years.
Harada discusses how the franchise’s visuals have evolved over the years, how the team chooses characters for each iteration of the game and how they would refine each arcade game over a certain period of time. He even laments the fact that there are so few competitors to Tekken 8 currently in the 3D fighting space. “It’s quite unfortunate, actually, that Tekken is one of the only 3D fighting games that is still being played actively by fans.”
It’s all finished off with a wonderful 2025 calendar that features some of the greatest isometric Spectrum games of all time, from Head Over Heels and Hydrofool to Knight Lore and Alien 8, as well as lots of smaller features including a review of Blaze Entertainment’s Evercade Alpha.
