Drone light shows are becoming a more and more popular option for cities and big events with some areas using them to somewhat replace fireworks for the less intrusive explosive sounds and creative animations that can be displayed using the flying tech programs.
Bandai Namco recently shared a crazy video for a Tekken 8-themed drone light show taking place over London, England to celebrate the game’s release, but now some experts are calling it likely fake and attempting to debunk it.
The video in question shows massive drone recreations of Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima clashing fists over the Tower Bridge in London before the lights shoot off and form the Tekken logo with the text “out now” underneath it.
It’s a really cool spectacle, and upon first starting work on this article, I simply believed it to be real, but after doing a little more digging, there were a few things that didn’t really add up.
For starters, there only appears to be this single video of the event using this one angle, and you’d think if this massive advertisement were displayed over the Tower Bridge in view of likely thousands upon thousands of people in the area that someone else would have filmed and shared it online — but we’ve yet to see any others.
#TEKKEN8 Drone show over Tower Bridge last night pic.twitter.com/iuH9VqWpcI
— BANDAI NAMCO UK (@BandaiNamcoUK) January 26, 2024
The Flyby Guys from Finland, whose entire business appears to be built around drone tech and drone light shows, also released a video of their own taking a closer look at the drones and circumstances to try and determine if the show was real or faked in post.
The host Stephen quickly notes that the drones are moving much too fast for what you’d witness in a real drone show, and while the footage could have been sped up, he has more points angled towards debunking it.
He calculates using the height of the Tower Bridge as reference that the Tekken characters are upwards of 180–200 meters high in the air, but claims the highest you’ll usually see drone shows go is around 120 meters.
This is due to the strain on drone batteries to reach and maintain that height for any amount of time for an actual show plus the added height can pose issues for commercial aviation and other potential problems, which they likely would not have gotten approval for.
According to when this drone video was posted and saying it was done the night before, the Flyby Guys were also able to tell this doesn’t match up with the weather in London at the time — and there was even a separate drone recording in the area that night with no sign of the show.
There is one piece of evidence that could point to it still being real, however, since you can see one person recording the event on their phone with the screen visible in the video that appears to line up though they also note this could have been edited in post or perhaps actually had the video complete and on the phone first.
With all the evidence we’ve seen, it’s looking unlikely there was a massive Tekken drone show over London that apparently everyone missed though we still can’t say with 100% certainty.
We also don’t know the exact origins of this video either, so it’s not clear who made it or why. Bandai Namco UK did share the video, but that doesn’t mean they created it.
Someone else could have very likely created it and passed the video along as something to get the attention of the company or perhaps someone not even involved with making it saw it, thought it looked cool, and tagged people / Bamco to share it.
What do you think about all of this? You can take a look at The Flyby Guys’ video below with their evidence and let us know in the comments.