It’s crazy to think that Tekken X Street Fighter (along with Street Fighter X Tekken) was announced back in 2010. Since then, Street Fighter X Tekken, Street Fighter 5, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 7, and Tekken 8 have all been released.
We were recently reminded of what could’ve been thanks to Tekken 8’s character customization. Players are encouraged to express themselves with these tools within Tekken 8. As highlighted by Sayed Omair Siam, someone was actually able to place Street Fighter’s Ryu and Ken into Tekken 8 with these options.
Jin is acting the part of Ryu while Lars is behaving as Ken in this clip. This works out perfectly as these two have a special intro that’s very similar to how Ryu and Ken give one another a fist bump in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.
Aside from that, they really do look just like Ryu and Ken as they’re most commonly seen. This means a white Gi for Ryu and a red Gi for Ken.
We even see that “Ryu” has a red headband wrapped around his head. Needless to say, the Street Fighter music playing in the background really goes the extra mile of selling the idea of these two fighting in a 3D environment.
Check it out in the clip below:
This is actually sick. This guy in reddit made Ryu and Ken in Tekken 8. #StoonCoold pic.twitter.com/kayweDBvP0
— Sayed Omair Siam (@OmairSiam) January 27, 2024
Of course, it’s certainly worth mentioning that, to this day, Tekken X Street Fighter has not actually been cancelled. At one point, Katsuhiro Harada of Bandai Namco noted that Tekken X Street Fighter was only about 30% finished before it “died.”
“Yeah, development stopped, but we got about 30% done,” said the Tekken X Street Fighter developers. “We even had motions, which you can see reflected in Akuma. The developing experience was useful. We wanted to show it, but the project died.”
For many, this gave the impression that Tekken X Street Fighter had finally been officially cancelled, but this wasn’t actually the case. Harada would later clarify what he meant when he said that the project’s development had died.
“We are still hopeful that TKxSF will resume development when the opportunity arises,” wrote Harada. “However, such a title cannot be moved just for the convenience of one company in terms of marketing and branding, and it also affects each other’s development resources. For now, we are just waiting for the right opportunity.”
In other words, it was intended to say that development for Tekken X Street Fighter had paused. It could still someday resume.
To this day, only Ryu, Jin, Evil Ryu, and Devil Jin were confirmed to be playable characters in Tekken X Street Fighter. However, the team has also previously alluded to Chun-Li and Akuma being planned.
We did actually get a taste of what it’d be like to have a Street Fighter rep fighting against Tekken characters in a 3D arena when Akuma was added to Tekken 7. Still, even that just serves as a reminder that Tekken X Street Fighter is still in limbo.
Unfortunately, we still probably have to continue waiting for the day that Tekken X Street Fighter resumes development. In the meantime, we at least have great games like Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6 to tide us over. It’s also cool how we can essentially put Street Fighter characters in Tekken 8 via these outstanding customization options.