Did you know that you’ll be able to rock your own jams in Tekken Tag Tournament 2? I didn’t either until Katushiro Harada, the Tekken chief producer himself, showed me how it works in an interview at gamescom today. Crazy, right? Couldn’t he have called in some intern to meet with me?
The Tekken Tunes option of the menu lets you change the background music in several areas of the game, giving you the option of mixing around the tracklist as you please. You can also import music from CDs or USB sticks to the PS3 hard disk, and then pull them from your playlists for a custom soundtrack. To show that it works, the man himself, Harada-san, popped Red Hot Chili Peppers’ classic album Blood Sugar Sex Magik into the PS3’s CD drive, and then assigned his jam, “Give it Away,” to the character select screen.
I say this all the time, but Harada is amazing.
After demonstrating this feature, Harada pointed out that you could get creative and record your own sounds or instruments to create a totally custom soundtrack. He suggested that a mom could record a message that would play to tell her child to stop playing games so much, or that a girlfriend could tell her boyfriend the same thing. He joked that he plans to sneak into Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono’s to record karaoke singing over the soundtrack.
Harada also said that fans have requested access to prior soundtracks for custom mixes for this feature. He hopes to be able to make older soundtracks available via download after launch. He said that they’ll have to charge for these songs on the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live, but points out that he does not consider this music DLC. He pointed out that people tend to get cranky when you mention DLC in a fighting game, and made it clear that all content game and character for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 will be free.
Again, Harada is amazing. He gave me a free drink ticket after our meeting.
