Bandai Namco Games’ Katsuhiro Harada has confirmed that Tekken 7 will not feature the return of the much-loved Tekken Force mini-game.
Speaking in a Q&A with fans on IGN, Harada-san revealed that the popular side-scrolling beat-’em-up mode, which was featured as one of many extras in 1998’s seminal PSOne port of Tekken 3, won’t be getting a PS4 overhaul with the latest addition to the franchise.
However, he instead pointed to the Tekken 7 story campaign, which he thinks will offer gamers plenty of distraction away from the bread-and-butter fisticuffs and reckons it’s more fun to boot.
Related – Tekken 7 hands-on preview
“Well, if you look back at the series, Tekken Force made its appearance – I think it was [Tekken] 3, and I was trying to recreate the feeling of the kind of games that were popular in the ‘80s. So that was the original intent. It was quite popular, so it saw another iteration in Tekken 4, and then it kind of evolved into the scenario campaign; the story-based mode in Tekken 6. So I guess you could say that, rather than that, people should focus more on the story mode for Tekken 7, because it’s kind of an extension [of that idea], just with a stronger storytelling aspect. It still contains a lot of mini game-type elements that people might expect of a Tekken game. We hope that they’ll check that out, because it’s more fun. So the short answer is – no, Tekken Force is not in it at the moment.”
Tekken 7 is scheduled for release on PS4, PC, and Xbox One on June 2, 2017. The game’s storyline features the conclusion to the long-running Mishima family feud, which sees Heihachi and Kazuya going head-to-head in one final, epic showdown. Tekken’s gameplay has also been given a shakeup with the addition of new moves such as Rage Arts, Power Crush, and even more fresh faces in the lineup.
Check out the latest Tekken 7 PS4 gameplay footage here.