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.”
Outside of its blistering Tekken coverage, issue 266 of Retro Gamer features articles on the Colin McRae Rally series, a tribute to the many great games on Capcom’s CPS-1 arcade board and what gamers can expect from the incoming Double Dragon Revive. You can also read about the importance of the isometric Spectrum hit Fairlight and the second Super FX game Stunt Race FX and go behind the scenes of The Thing and its incoming remaster, as well as Blizzard’s World Of Warcraft and the excellent NES game Gimmick!.
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.
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"I didn’t have a single ally": Tekken 4's negative reception put series boss Katsuhiro Harada under so much stress that he left Namco for a year
Tekken 8 boss gives broken Tifa stans hope after Clive got to join the fighter instead: "It's not like we're only limited to one character from Final Fantasy"
