When The Going Gets Weird, The Weird Make Fighting Games

Don’t think of upcoming fighting crossovers as Street Fighter x Tekken (or vice-versa), but rather, one unhinged game producer against another.

Kotaku first reported on the Twitter antics of Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono and Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada last summer. Since then, things have escalated as evident by the baseball bat and knives Ono branded earlier this week.

https://lastchance.cc/street-fighter-tekken-creators-duel-and-hunt-each-othe-5618172%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

Of course, this is all in good fun, with both Ono and Harada being both perfectly sensible (and perfectly lovely) individuals. But it’s not simply goofing off. This drums up interest in the upcoming collaborations between the two studios. It has whiffs of a viral promotion — not in a bad way, but a crazy as a fox way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOgk97vSkIE

The “battle” that’s being waged between the two in real time is a manifestation of the game they’re working on. Something like this would only be possible right now with each of them jokingly taunting each other via Twitter in real time. It’s interactive and ridiculous, two key words for the times in which we live.

I’ve been picking my brain, trying to recall games that’ve been promoted in such a low-budget, yet totally entertaining, and ramshackle fashion. The question now isn’t whether they can keep this up (no doubt they can), but whether the actual games will be this much fun. Hope so.

@Yoshi_OnoChin and @Harada_TEKKEN [Twitter]