You’d think the majority of the news surrounding Tekken 8 right now might be its newest character, Eddy Gordo, and patch that he brought along with his update, but we keep seeing a surprising amount of discussion and attention to the goofy yet apt idea of bringing a Waffle House parking lot stage to the game.
Indeed, this meme has picked up enough momentum that Director Katsuhiro Harada actually responded to it with a surprisingly open sense of inquiry. While we aren’t getting our hopes up that it will come to official fruition, modders are already on the case as we now have footage of Devil Jin and Reina duking it out in front of the greasy spoon diner.
To those who would say that Waffle House seems like an extremely random location for a fighting game stage, there is indeed a reason. The American chain spans over 1,900 locations across 25 states, every one of which seems to retain the exact same atmosphere: not exactly squeaky clean, surprisingly tasty, and the constant elevated chance that a fight might break out at any given moment.
The often 24-hour establishment is often found off freeways, and tends to frequented by rowdier patrons especially after the bars close down.
The following clip, which circulated in late 2022, captures the spirit almost perfectly as customers throw multiple chairs at employees, one of which pulls off a perfect parry and thus betrays the fact that this isn’t the first chair she’s deflected… maybe even of that day:
the waffle house chair moment is even more insane slowed down pic.twitter.com/EU9UpSEh62
— Patches Chance (@patcheschance) December 28, 2022
This is just first of what we assume will be many fan attempts as bringing Waffle House into Tekken 8. Future mods will likely dig in with more than just a green screen kind of approach, but for now this will do:
waffle house in tekken 8 pic.twitter.com/BFFHkn68DW
— Murdoink (@Murdoink) April 4, 2024