Once upon a time, a magical collaboration between a preventing recreation franchise and worldwide quick meals mascot nearly befell, till a fried rooster conglomerate acquired in the best way. I’m in fact speaking about Tekken and its director Katsuhiro Harada’s try to convey KFC mascot Colonel Sanders on as a visitor fighter. So a lot potential in that pairing, but it surely wasn’t meant to be.
In an interview with TheGamer, Harada briefly informed the story of reaching out to KFC throughout improvement of an unspecified Tekken recreation.
“A very long time in the past, I needed to have Colonel Sanders from Kentucky Fried Chicken combat,” Harada stated. “So, I requested to make use of Colonel Sanders and go to the top workplace in Japan.” Harada stated he traveled to KFC headquarters, obtained a “dangerous look”, and was shot down.
In the identical TheGamer interview, Tekken 8 recreation designer Michael Murray expanded on why the fried rooster restaurant, which has a big bodily and cultural presence in Japan, may not have been keen to work with them.
“[Colonel Sanders] appeared in video games after that. So perhaps it was simply him preventing in opposition to somebody [that] was posing an issue for them,” Murray stated. “But it simply goes to point out how tough these kind of discussions are.”
One Sanders recreation Murray was most likely referring to is I Love You, Colonel Sanders!, the official KFC courting sim/adver-game the corporate launched totally free in 2019. I share Murray’s confusion: Fawning over and smooching Colonel Sanders is on the desk, however buying and selling blows with Heihachi Mishima is a bridge too far? I hate to present a hat tip to Burger King—objectively the worst burger in quick meals—however no less than when that franchise determined to spend some advertising and marketing {dollars} turning its mascot right into a videogame star, the Sneak King did not screw round.
Maybe Harada was coping with an older, less-enlightened rooster regime on the time, but it surely sounds just like the inventive director does not plan on making an attempt once more. KFC’s loss.
