Katsuhiro Harada

History

Harada's own accounts of the Tekken series, gathered on his YouTube channel Harada's Bar, are as candid about failure as they are about success. On Tekken 4 (2001), he has said the phone-booth stage gimmick was his own idea — "smashing opponents into that phone booth must be exhilarating" — but that it wasn't popular at the time, and that roughly 80% of players felt the game had strayed too far from what Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag Tournament had established. Only two decades later, he says, did players start telling him it might have been a masterpiece after all — a reversal he still meets with skepticism: "I don't think they know how people used to talk about me back then." He describes the game plainly: "It was a turning point for me. That game is filled with regrets and many lessons learned. Because of that, we are where we are now."

Other stories he tells reveal how much of the series' backbone was built informally, inside a small team. Taiko no Tatsujin, he says, was pitched to him by a junior colleague in his department who showed up with 'a cassette player, a box, and drumsticks' and about three teammates; Harada initially doubted it would sell, was proven wrong within two years, and apologized eight years later. Urban Reign (2005), he says, was made as a spin-off by his senpai Ishiguro — well-reviewed, including overseas, but underpromoted and a commercial disappointment. And in Tekken Tag Tournament and its sequel, he has revealed that the story mode is, officially, all a dream imagined by the character Ganryu: "Not many know this... In those two games, in a way, Ganryu is the main character. Those are Ganryu's dream." He has also described discovering Tekken's character artist jbstyle. through producer Nakatsu — and initially turning him away for not yet being good enough, before rehiring him two years later once his skill had visibly grown.