Tekken 8 Producer Tried to Get a Waffle House Stage, and Still Wants To
A culinary beatdown.
For nearly two years there’s been a running gag in the Tekken community, with fans begging producer Katsuhiro Harada to put a Waffle House stage in the game. If you’re unsure why that would be a thing, or you aren’t local to one, the Waffle House is where you can go to get a deeply cheap but filling meal at 3am — but it’s also notorious for fights. You can find dozen of low-res TikToks of fights at Waffle House, including the incredible one where a worker parries a chair. Hilariously, it seems like Harada actually took those recommendations to heart, and reached out to Waffle House to try and feature it within Tekken. Yes, he really did.
In a post on X, Harada responded to a fan asking where the Waffle House stage was, by saying, “If we can’t get that ‘House’ name license, how about we call it ‘Hustle House’ stage?”
After another reply Harada then clarified that over the past year, he’d actually tried making contact with Waffle House through multiple different channels, but the chain had yet to respond to him. He says “This is purely my own speculation, but I suspect that the lack of response may be due to the fact that the project I’m known for revolves around ‘fighting-themed video games.”
In Tekken 8, where a 75-year-old man headbutts a meteor, maybe Waffle House isn’t too out of place.
But that doesn’t mean all hope of serving beatdowns instead of breakfasts is lost, as Harada reiterated his idea of changing the name.
“If — like I suggested earlier — using a different name or format is acceptable as long as the core message is maintained, then I would be willing to seriously reconsider and explore this again,” Harada says.
So it certainly sounds like the idea could potentially happen, whether it features the real restaurant or not. It’s just entirely up to the fans to voice support for the idea. That’s pretty indicative of how things in general have gone with Tekken 8, a game that had a strong initial reception, but been met with fair criticism over its DLC and post-launch content.
In particular, the launch of Tekken 8’s Season 2 brought some massive balance changes that significantly changed characters — and the potential meta for the competitive scene. Bandai Namco was quick to deploy an emergency patch, but at that time Harada himself said, “I personally do not think this backlash is at all unjustified. I recognize that it is a natural occurrence and we have no choice but to respond by continuing to update.”
Tekken has a long history of crossovers, from Heihachi appearing in SoulCalibur 2, to Final Fantasy XVI’s Clive recently joining Tekken 8.
To his credit, Harada has been one of the most responsive developers in the industry about responding and listening to fan feedback, but he’s also recognized a line needs be drawn somewhere.
Waffle House getting added to Tekken sounds like an absolutely ridiculous idea, but having someone like Harada heading the franchise makes it actually feasible. A creator constantly striving to find the middle ground between pleasing fans and realizing the development team’s vision.
Who know, next year at this time maybe we’ll be watching the Tekken 8 World Finals at EVO, with a giant bear and a devil-man beating the snot out of each other while innocent diners watch in the background.
