Hiya!

Today is a sad day for the fighting game community. Katsuhiro Harada has announced he is leaving Bandai Namco and, in turn, also stepping down as the head honcho of the Tekken fighting game franchise. The man has been a part of the Tekken games ever since its release more than 3 decades ago. Ever since he started working at Bandai Namco (then just Namco), he has had his fingers in the franchise, starting out as a consultant and a voice actor for Marshall Law and Yoshimitsu. He was then promoted to director in Tekken 3 (one of the best games in the series, mind you) and then producer in Tekken 6. Sadly, all good things will come to an end by the end of the year as Harada will end his storied career with Bandai Namco and Tekken then.

Of course, with this big announcement, the Tekken community and the fighting game community as a whole has expressed sadness. The man has been the face of Tekken for ages and, indeed, this is really bittersweet. Harada did explain why he was leaving in a tweet and I can definitely understand. He’s been doing this for more than 30 years so he deserves to take some rest. Still, the outpouring of love for the man has been great.

Me? I’m not a Tekken gal. I’m more of a Street Fighter gal. I’ve tried playing Tekken but I’ve generally always went back to Street Fighter. Still, I know how much of an impact he’s made to the fighting game community and even in Street Fighter as well. So, I’d like to dedicate this post to my memories of Harada-san despite being mostly a Street Fighter fangirl.

First off, I never really heard of Harada-san when I started to play video games. All I knew were the games. I know of Street Fighter and Tekken but I didn’t really think too much about the people behind Street Fighter and Tekken. That all changed for me with Yoshinori Ono. This was the guy who pleaded with Capcom to bring back the Street Fighter series after it kind of died. He became the producer of Street Fighter IV and returned the series back to prominence.

However, that’s not how I knew about him. No, the big reason why Yoshinori Ono stuck out from all of the other people behind the game is he was a quirky little dude! This was a little, hyperactive little guy who was super enthusiastic about his game and carried around a little Blanka figure around with him everywhere he went! His happiness was infectious and it made me appreciate Ono more than just the brains behind Street Fighter IV but as a personality as well.

Then came Street Fighter X Tekken, the failed crossover between the two fighting game juggernauts. This was not my first time playing a game with Tekken characters but this led to my first contact with Harada-san.

In order to promote the game, Yoshinori Ono and Katsuhiro Harada shot a promo video playing various competitive games. This was generally to highlight how the Street Fighter and Tekken were joining forces but this also kind of was the birth of Harada’s persona as a tough bad guy… and it looked like he really relished being the baddie.

Although they were technically rivals from different companies, it didn’t look like there was any bad blood between the two. It just looked like a couple of friends doing silly stuff. So, while I didn’t appreciate Street Fighter X Tekken, I fully appreciated both Ono-san and Harada-san for putting aside their differences to not only put the game together but to work well together.

Like I said, it looked like Harada-san enjoyed his bad guy persona since he leaned into it even after the failure of Street Fighter X Tekken. He was just this gruff man who didn’t take guff from anyone else. When a lot of Americans would, say, complain about the introduction of Lucky Chloe in Tekken 7 because of her character design, Harada would respond to the hate with a trollish response by saying the character would not be made available in the USA and replaced with a muscular skinhead. There was also the time when he went on stage and jokingly told the crowd to “shut up and don’t ask me for shit.” That was hilarious!

I also remember the time when he would just barge in on the commentators during EVO just to yuck it up with them and to celebrate, well, Tekken with them and the crowd. A good example is him climbing up to the commentator’s booth when they showed the teaser for Tekken 8. He just had to get up there and start celebrating with the commentators! Probably my favorite interaction he had with the commentators was when he just barged in randomly on Tasty Steve doing a rant just so he can insult the man!

As good as those moments are, they aren’t my best Harada-san memories. The first one involves him reuniting with Yoshinori Ono once again on stage. By this time Ono-sad had left Capcom and it’s been years since Street Fighter X Tekken was released. So, it was a surprise to see Ono-san pop up on stage while Harada-san was talking just to remind him how Harada-san never made Tekken X Street Fighter!

Then there was the recent Tekken Sajam Slam event that happened at last year’s EVO. For the uninitiated, Sajam Slam takes a bunch of streamers who may or may not play fighting games and groups them into teams. Some of the players for that year’s Sajam Slam were invited over to play against other people from the fighting game community. For the last game, they had popular video game streamer and, most recently, the 2025 Fighting Game Streamer at the Streamy Awards, Lilypichu face off against another random competitor from the crowd. It just so happened this “random competitor” was Harada-san!

This was surprisingly a much more exciting match than I expected it to be! Although Harada-san is the producer of the Tekken games, he’s not super good at playing it. I mean, he’s good enough and he can definitely beat me but not against pros. He’s certainly made that evident during the times he joined the Tekken Royal Rumbles and various tournaments at CEO. Then again, Lilypichu hasn’t been playing Tekken 8 for that long so the game was evenly matched. The final match and final round was a classic, with it going down to the wire with Lilypichu eking out the win with a desperation Rage Art to close the match.

I cannot really say how much Harada-san influenced the development of the Tekken games. Like I said, I’m not a Tekken gal. However, I do appreciate how he goes out to events to be the public face of Tekken. He always seems like a good sport and he seems like he really cares for the fighting game community as a whole. He’s not some stuffed shirt who makes decisions via graphs and charts. No, he’s a guy who went on the floor to see what the community wants and be involved with them.

30 years is a long time. So, while I am sad to see Harada-san walk into the sunset for now, I’m glad he can finally get to rest and not have people ask him for shit anymore. You deserve it.

Byee!

What’s your take on Katsuhiro Harada leaving Bandai Namco and the Tekken games? Let me know in the comments section below!