Yesterday was an exciting day for fans of Bandai Namco’s popular 3D fighting game, Tekken 7. The Tokyo-based developer held a tournament dubbed “The King of the Iron Fist Tournament” (named after the same in-game tournament within which Tekken’s characters compete), which brought together 27 of the world’s strongest Tekken players to compete for an $80,000 prize pool. At the end of the event, Bandai Namco surprised everyone with a special trailer. The star of the cinematic: Akuma, Ryu’s nemesis from the Street Fighter series.
In the upcoming Fated Retribution update, Tekken 7 players will now be able to beat down their opponents using the legendary Satsui no Hadou master himself. Akuma seems to have retained his basic moveset in Tekken 7, throwing Gohadouken fireballs both on the ground and in the air, dealing spinning Tatsumaki kicks, uppercutting Tekken’s Heihachi with Goshoryukens, and even pulling out his signature massive damage move: the Shun Goku Satsu, or Raging Demon. Fans of both Street Fighter and Tekken alike will be pleased to see that Akuma’s playing style looks like it has transitioned seamlessly from Street Fighter’s 2D playing fields to Tekken’s 3D arenas.
His reason for showing up in Tekken has also been smoothly worked into the Tekken 7 storyline. At the beginning of the trailer, Heihachi’s wife Kazumi laments on her husband’s desire to dominate the world. She enlists the help of Akuma to stop both her husband and her son, Kazuya, from bringing chaos upon mankind.
The Fated Retribution update will also bring graphical updates and new gameplay content to Tekken 7.
No release date has been announced yet for Fated Retribution, but it certainly has fans in a buzz. The update also reminds fans of the enigmatic Tekken x Street Fighter, which was announced back in 2010 and seemed to have fallen into the development abyss until Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada announced in July that the game was “pretty far” into development. Whether Akuma’s appearance in the Tekken universe acts as a demonstration of what we can expect to see in Tekken x Street Fighter or not remains to be seen.
Tekken 7 released in February of this year in Japanese arcades, but its PlayStation 4 and overseas releases have not yet been announced. The game is still in a beta stage and is undergoing play testing every day.