Tekken Chief Katsuhiro Harada Couldn’t Get Pac-Man in Tekken Before, but Maybe Now It’s Possible With Shadow Labyrinth Coming Out

Tekken chief Katsuhiro Harada is now also the executive producer of Shadow Labyrinth, the surprise Pac-Man spin-off first revealed in one of the episodes of Amazon’s anthology animated series Secret Level before a reveal trailer for the video game itself at The Game Awards 2024.

All of which begs the question: could The Swordsman, the main character from Shadow Labyrinth, appear in Tekken as a guest character? In many ways it would make sense, given both Tekken and Pac-Man are owned by Bandai Namco, and The Swordsman is an actual humanoid fighter who wields a sword. But what does Harada himself think?

IGN put that question to the man himself in a recent interview, and his response suggested such a crossover is certainly possible.

“Perhaps,” Harada responded when asked, “because the game environment would be a good crossover for Tekken, atmosphere-wise.”

It turns out that Harada explored the possibility of adding Pac-Man to Tekken as a guest character long before Shadow Labyrinth was a thing. But designs for the character, which saw Pac-Man as a head on a muscular humanoid body, horrified original Pac-Man creator Tōru Iwatani.

“Many years ago, Iwatani-san, the original creator of Pac-Man, was still in the company when we were here. And I thought about maybe using Pac-Man as a guest character,” Harada remembered. “So I had the artist come up with a sketch and it turned out to be that the character had like a Pac-Man head, but the body was this really muscular bodybuilder type.

“I showed it to Iwatani-san, and Iwatani-san got so upset and scolded me quite heavily. So I was surprised that, ‘Oh, I can’t just be quite liberal with the Pac-Man IP, I have to be more constrained.’ At the time I was a bit surprised, but now because of the atmosphere of this [Shadow Labyrinth], it’s something that could be considered.”

Iwatani, by the way, is apparently fully on board with Bandai Namco’s plan to take the Pac-Man IP in totally different directions. “Iwatani-san seems to realize that that’s something that’s needed at this point,” Harada added.

2D action platformer Shadow Labyrinth stars The Swordsman, a character whose only goal is to “eat” as they attempt to escape a maze. It’s a Metroidvania of sorts, and a significant departure for the world famous arcade franchise. Meanwhile, Tekken 8 gets Clive from Final Fantasy 16 as a DLC character.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.