How seriously we take the info is another question though it does make sense
Fighting game stories and worlds are becoming a bit more convoluted again with crossovers now a common occurrence where some are directly canon while others remain vague at best.
Years before Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui were announced for Street Fighter 6, a couple icons from Capcom and SNK appeared in a different mainline fighter with Tekken 7, and one of them just got a fun new bit of crossover lore attached to them.
As pointed out by UltimaShadow, Akuma was a canon part of Tekken 7’s story while Terry and Mai will be featured in SF6’s World Tour, which somewhat officially opens the door to those two games and Fatal Fury all taking place in the same universe.
Longtime Tekken Project Director Katsuhiro Harada saw this post and took things in a bit of a different direction with their other big crossover inclusion from the last game.
According to Harada, Geese Howard taught Eliza how to perform her Dark Wave projectile.
This would make sense considering the vampire’s fireball looks a lot like the Fatal Fury villain’s Reppuken that also travels along the ground.
We’re not immediately taking this to be truly canon, however, since there’s nothing else to really back that up, and Harada’s ellipses at the end may imply he’s being a bit sarcastic or having some fun with fans over the connected concept.
Also, it was Geese Howard who taught TEKKEN Eliza the “Dark Wave”…… https://t.co/yOFPgBWDWZ
— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) June 9, 2024
Unlike Akuma, Geese wasn’t really given much for story details in Tekken besides being interested in the Devil Gene, and we’re not even sure if his appearance is technically even canon either.
But knowing the brutal fighter with an unsatiable hunger for power and knowledge, we could definitely see Howard being supremely intrigued by Eliza and her vampire abilities.
This doesn’t do much to clear up what’s actually going on in these games now with guest characters running around, but it’s at least some fun food for thought.
These series have of course interacted before in crossover games like Capcom vs. SNK and Street Fighter X Tekken though those were always set up as what if combination timelines as opposed to now when Terry is showing up in a mainline Street Fighter.
How Terry and Mai will be incorporated into SF6’s story and any impact they have remains to be seen along with where Tekken 8 will go with crossovers in the future.
Previously, Harada revealed his team originally wanted a different Fatal Fury villain for Tekken 7 instead of Geese.
We also recently discussed why Terry and Mai’s inclusion marks a major shift for Capcom, which could spell the end of crossover fighters as we knew them.