Kirby could be Tekken 8’s weirdest playable fighter

Fighting game crossovers are a real treat for fans, especially when they’re bringing other fighting icons into the fray. Smash Bros is the best example of this, introducing Punch Out!’s Little Mac, Street Fighter’s Ryu and Kazuya of Tekken fame to the battlefield.

Many fans have wondered if the opposite could be true, and that we could see the likes of Mario and Link in the more mature fighting giants. Now, it looks like one Tekken team member has shed some light on the chances, with the bizarre idea of Kirby coming to Tekken 8. 

Tekken devs aren’t confident Kirby will be a fighter in Tekken

Well, that settles that, then. Katsuhiro Harada is a Game Director and employee of the Tekken games for over 29 years, meaning he has the inside track on the franchise. Taking to Twitter, Harada has spoken about the chances of Kirby coming to the fighting series.

“You want me to negotiate such a difficult deal with Nintendo?” he asks a fan in a quote tweet. Well, that’s that sorted. We know Nintendo is notoriously protective of its IPs, and by the sounds of it, nabbing someone like Kirby might be just out of reach for Tekken 8. 

“By the way,” he adds, “the scene where Kazuya drops Kirby in the Smash Bros. trailer came about because Mr. Sakurai had always wanted to do it. I rather insisted that I didn’t want to antagonize Kirby’s fans lol.“

Adding Kirby to Tekken would be an incredible headache

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Nintendo

Fans didn’t seem too peeved about Kazuya dropping the pink puffball from a cliff (though they probably should have been) which is good news, but Harada is right in that the deal to make the collab happen would likely be gruelling. W

We know just how protective Sakurai is about his baby, and it means that the Tekken devs are probably better off without the stresses of adding the character to the game. After all, once he’s in we have to think about how tall Kirby actually is.

Either the punches will fly clean over him, or he’s an eldritch horror the size of a man and can swallow an entire room with a single breath. And we’re not sure we’re ready to confront that. For the time being, we might have to keep our crossovers to the likes of Homelander and Harley Quinn in Mortal Kombat 1.