Tekken producer says weird, new Pac-Man would make for a ‘good crossover’

Katsuhiro Harada, who handles all things Tekken at Bandai Namco, sounds interested in a potential crossover with the gritty take on Pac-Man seen in the sixth episode of Amazon series Secret Level and used as the basis of the upcoming Shadow Labyrinth.

“The game environment would be a good crossover for Tekken, atmosphere-wise,” Harada told IGN when asked if the 3D fighting game might ever introduce Shadow Labyrinth’s hero as a guest character. He then launched into a story about his previous attempts to put Pac-Man in Tekken.

“Many years ago, Iwatani-san, the original creator of Pac-Man, was still in the company when we were here,” Harada said. “And I thought about maybe using Pac-Man as a guest character. 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.”

Iwatani was displeased and scolded him, Harada recalled, but now that the Pac-Man creator has signed off on a project like Shadow Labyrinth, he sees an opportunity to fulfill his wish of seeing the old-school arcade character in Tekken.

Despite all this, Pac-Man has actually appeared in two fighting games since then. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U / 3DS and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate included a Pac-Man with a moveset that referenced both his coin-op roots and various adventure game spin-offs, while Street Fighter x Tekken featured a Pac-Man riding a robot based on Tekken franchise punching bag Mokujin. As such, the more realistic, humanoid Shadow Labyrinth swordsman seems like a slam dunk crossover for Bandai Namco’s flagship fighting game franchise.

Secret Level’s Pac-Man episode has been available on Amazon Prime since Dec. 10, with the Shadow Labyrinth follow-up game set to launch sometime next year.