Tekken series director Katsuhiro Harada apparently just opened a bar somewhere in Japan. Aptly named Harada’s Bar, he didn’t just invite a special guest to celebrate the occasion; but also recorded a talk show. For the first episode (and as the grand opening celebration of Harada’s Bar), he invited a guest who “makes him sweat like crazy.” Which is none other than “father of PlayStation,” the former chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Ken Kutaragi. Kutaragi brought a cask of sake as a gift and, after handing it over to Harada, they reminisce about the past as well as have a long discussion about Kutaragi’s new job, robotics technology, Nvidia, and AI software. It might sound weird but quite interesting, nonetheless.
Their talk will continue next week in the second episode of Harada’s Bar. Considering his guest this time, it’s not surprising that Harada doesn’t talk much about Tekken or fighting games in the first episode. Still, he plans to bring in more eSports personalities and gaming industry members in the future. New episodes will go live every Saturday. For now, you can easily enjoy the debut Harada Bar episode on YouTube below since the video is uploaded with English subtitles.
However, as stated in the video, if you’re looking to visit Harada’s Bar after this pandemic slows down, unfortunately, the location is still kept secret. Nevertheless, he is planning to open it for the public sometime in the future. Kutaragi did mention that the place might be somewhere in “central Tokyo,” though. Maybe some internet supersleuth will manage to pinpoint the location using only the video footage and Google Maps.
Katsuhiro Harada is currently working as a game director and chief producer of the action/fighting games at Bandai Namco. He has worked on the Tekken series for the past 27 years, starting by doing grunt’s work and voicing Marshall Law in the original Tekken title. In 2019, Harada was promoted to lead the fighting game esports division of Bandai Namco and the position of general manager of the Bandai Namco original IP projects. Recently, Katsuhiro Harada and other fighting game developers ran the Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable live stream. They show off new updates for their games and discussed the fighting game industry trends in Japan.
