Tekken fans have been, for years, been asking for the American food chain restaurant Waffle House to become a playable battleground in the popular fighting game series. While this has mostly been a fan desire at this point, apparently Katsuhiro Harada, the Tekken 8 game director, has actually been reaching out to the company, trying to put something together.
Harada took to X, responding to fans fervent for the collaboration to happen in the Tekken 8, the most recent entry. Prior to this, Harada, a Japanese game developer, expressed interest in learning more about this, given that there is some layer of culture shock to the request. Now, though, he has stated that he fully understands this fan request, and in fact, he has reached out to the company in an attempt to work out some kind of deal.
He stated:
Over the past year or more, I’ve actually tried to make contact through several different channels. However, and this is purely my own speculation, I suspect that the lack of response may be due to the fact that the project I’m known for revolves around ‘fighting-themed video games.
He went on to state that receiving “no response” is a very rare case, and that he would be willing to change the name or format of this collab so long as the  “core message is maintained,” at which point he would be seriously willing to consider exploring this again, given his attempts to reach out thus far have proven unsuccessful.
If this did come to pass, it’s not like it would be the first time an American Fast Food Restaurant. Tekken 8, for instance, had previously teamed up with Chipotle with in-game cosmetics featuring the company’s logo on them. I, having only been to a Waffle House once and it being so packed that we left, can see where some concerns from the company about the optics might come into play.
For now, we will have to live with the fact that we live in a timeline where Waffle House is harder to get in touch with than George R.R. Martin.
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