Bandai Namco may have just revealed Tekken 8 in a bizarre and oddly nostalgic way during the Evolution Championship Series 2022 fighting game tournament livestream. This weekend’s festivities saw talented fighting game players from all over the world come together on the EVO stage in Los Vegas to test their skills in big-name titles like Guilty Gear Strive, Street Fighter 5, Skullgirls, and even the recently released Warner Bros-themed crossover brawler MultiVersus - and there were plenty of new reveals about the future of the fighting game genre even as fans celebrated its present.
Another major fighting game that was on display at this year’s EVO event was Tekken 7, which was released in 2017 and serves as the ninth overall installment in the long-running Tekken series. Longtime Tekken director and producer Katsuhiro Harada billed Tekken 7’s plot as a finale of sorts to the Mishima Zaibatsu storyline that has been at the heart of the series since the original Tekken (complete with Kazuya and Heihachi Mishima seemingly fighting their last battle in the climax of Tekken 7's story mode), but he also promised that there would be more Tekken games after Tekken 7 in the future. Now, it seems that the next installment of this fabled fighting game series has been teased in a cryptic and unorthodox way during this year’s EVO 2022 livestream.
According to GamesRadar, yesterday’s EVO 2022 tournament livestream featured a brief clip of Kazuya Mishima’s ending in the original Tekken, showing the anti-hero tossing the body of his beaten father Heihachi over a cliff for the first and ultimately not last time. However, as the early-90s CGI character model of Kazuya turns to smile at the camera, the scene suddenly changes to a more realistically-rendered version grinning ominously at viewers with one eye glowing and the words “Get Ready” appearing on screen. Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada then briefly took to the stage in front of the frenzied crowd and commentators to wordlessly hype up whatever new Tekken project this short teaser trailer was meant to signify. This clip was subsequently shared by Twitter user TekkenGamercom, as can be seen below.
What Last Night’s Tekken Tease Could Mean
Exactly what the cryptic Tekken teaser implies isn’t clear at this time, but many fans are naturally over the moon at the idea that Tekken 8 is finally on the way after five years. Of course, this brief image of Kazuya Mishima could be a sign of another speculated Tekken project, such as the "paused" Tekken X Street Fighter crossover project. However, it seems more likely that this Tekken clip is meant to be a sign that Tekken 8 is in the works.
Whatever the case may be, the potential Tekken 8 teaser sent shockwaves throughout the EVO 2022 arena, with the commentary staff barely able to contain their excitement at the sight of Kazuya Mishima seemingly heralding the arrival of the franchise's next chapter. It still isn’t entirely clear what Katsuhiro Harada and his team at Bandai Namco have planned for the future of Tekken, but fans now know that they haven’t seen the last of Tekken's Kazuya Mishima.
Source: GamesRadar, TekkenGamercom/Twitter