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Katsuhiro Harada, the longtime producer of Bandai Namco’s Tekken series of fighting games, has begun a new side-gig as a bartender. The first episode of Harada’s Bar sees former Sony Computer Entertainment chairman Ken Kutaragi pay a visit to Harada’s tavern, with the duo reminiscing about the early days of PlayStation and Tekken.
One of the funnier stories from the video involved Kutaragi revealing how the headquarters for PlayStation Japan was chosen, which was kept separate from the main Sony building due to it not being near any decent bars.
“There was the main Sony office in Shinagawa at that time, but there is nothing around at night. There were a few places to drink but they closed at 8 pm,” Kutaragi said. “We wanted to talk to various creators and game companies about our aspirations, so we decided to move to a more active part of the city.”
Harada also revealed that that the PlayStation founder would regularly bring a cask of sake with him to Namco every time a project with PlayStation was completed, a tradition that Microsoft wasn’t aware of.
“Relating to that, also here is a funny story everyone laughed at me about,” Harada said. “We had worked with only PlayStation for a while, therefore I thought it was common that whenever a project was completed, the president of first-party visits with a case of sake. Then, after 21 years, we launched Tekken for the first time on another platform, on Xbox 360 in 2009 and when we finally completed the project, I wondered why Microsoft wouldn’t show up with a cask of sake. Then I asked about this and they answered, “of course this is not a common occurrence at all.'”
Kutaragi has been working as the CEO of Tokyo’s Ascent Robotics recently, a role he discussed in detail for the rest of the episode. As for Harada, he hasn’t given up his day job on Tekken 7 and the game is preparing to add Polish Prime Minister Lidia Sobeiska to its roster later this year.
