[Team Yu]

Tekken 7 director Katsuhiro Harada is seeking nominations for guest characters to appear in the game as downloadable content. To help boost Ryo Hazuki’s chances of raising Shenmue’s visibility in this mainstream hit fighting franchise, simply reply to Harada’s tweet here.

So far, Kazuma Kiryu, star of the Yakuza series, has been one of the most requested characters. It would certainly be interesting to see both of these Sega warriors collide in the same hand-to-hand combat game in a long-anticipated battle for supremacy.

While Ryo’s spiritual roots are more closely associated with Virtua Fighter, it’s worth stressing that this opportunity to nominate characters does not exist for that game, so there’s nothing to be gained by withholding our support for Ryo on the grounds that we’d “rather see him in Virtua Fighter.” This rare opportunity has come along to put him in a high profile fighting game, so we should take advantage of it while we can.

And though Harada’s Tekken series is commonly seen as a rival to Virtua Fighter, the director has a tremendous respect for Yu Suzuki, as witnessed in a recent joint interview conducted by Japanese gaming site DenFamiNicoGamer, translated in multiple parts by Switch of the Phantom River Stone blog.

[Team Yu]

Thanks to your participation, Ryo Hazuki of Shenmue is now, by our estimate, one of the most requested characters to potentially join Tekken 7 as part of upcoming DLC, with Yakuza's Kazuma Kiryu being the other frontrunner in demand for the two available spots on the roster.

No decisions have yet been announced, and obviously much will rely on negotiations between publishers, but the game's director Katsuhiro Harada was asked to comment on both suggestions in a filmed interview here:

https://youtu.be/_WjCbdHPPy0

(Skip to 8:20 for relevant discussion, and beware Yakuza 0 footage on screen from 9:58 if you're still dodging any and all spoilers!)

In short, he finds requests for Kazuma more surprising than those for Ryo, having been under the impression that Yakuza was not as popular in the West as Shenmue.

Fingers crossed that both make it onto the roster, officially enabling the dream battle that fans of both series have long speculated over.

In the meantime, you can check out some of the other responses to Harada's call for character ideas and supply your own here.