The welcoming of SNK character (Terry Bogard) into Street Fighter 6 marked the fall of a kind of last bastion for fighting game isolation as most all of the AAA franchises (Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Super Smash Bros.) have officially welcomed guests from beyond their own development companies.
Wish lists and speculative talk about the kinds of potential appearances and crossovers have abounded on fighting game social media, and Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada recently chimed in on the prospect of having Mortal Kombat’s Scorpion as a Tekken guest.
Tekken has already welcomed the likes of SNK’s Geese Howard, Capcom’s Akuma, The Walking Dead’s Negan Smith, Square Enix’ Noctis, and Gon the dinosaur (who hails from Gon the anime), so at this point adding someone like Scorpion or Sub-Zero would be more or less par for the course.
Players in the community have been speculating about the potential of cross pollination between AAA franchises like Tekken, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat for the last three decades, but there’s clearly been some red tape holding such crossovers from coming to fruition, especially when it comes to Mortal Kombat.
Unlike the other major franchises in the discussion, Mortal Kombat’s very identity is synonymous with over the top gore and violence, an atmosphere not all developers are exactly happy to allow their beloved and iconic characters to enter.
Be that as it may, Katshuiro Harada was directly asked on X about the possibility of putting Scorpion in Tekken. He responded with enthusiasm at the prospect, but brought up some red tape factors, none of which had anything to do with the level of expected gore or violence that might come with him:
It would be wonderful to see it happen. But I don’t think it will happen easily because collaboration is largely dependent on the availability of the other party and timing is also important. There are various advantages and disadvantages for both parties. https://t.co/kS5QH1q2zd
— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) September 2, 2024
While this makes it sound as though we shouldn’t expect such a venture to happen all that soon, the way Harada presents it does imply it may now more be a matter of time and alignment of availability.
This is a notably different obstacle than having two franchises with incompatible identities, and may further indicate that fighting game companies are finally working with philosophies that allow for broader horizons.
Indeed it was just back in July that Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama expressed what felt like a new level of openness from Street Fighter developers to feature Mortal Kombat guests, and with the increasing number of crossover appearances emerging in popular fighting game culture, not having the likes of Scorpion and Sub-Zero in non-NetherRealm Studios titles is almost starting to feel odd.
We’re not holding our breath for it to happen in the immediate future, but what do you think about the prospect of a Mortal Kombat character in Tekken in the medium to long term?
Do you hope this trend continues, or do fighting games need to work on retaining unique identities before it all just becomes one big amalgamation of punches, kicks, and fireballs?