After Tekken 8‘s AI ghost data allowed a fan of the series to battle the data of their deceased brother, series producer Katsuhiro Harada saw it as a possible “glimpse of where fighting games are going.”
A lot of fighting game fans face the same problem: a lot of times you’re too good to play casually but not quite good enough to compete at a high level, and fighting AI just doesn’t hit the same way. The ideal scenario is fighting someone locally who is roughly the same skill level as you, but that’s hard to do if your area doesn’t have a local fighting game community. So you’re forced to enter the cesspool of online and deal with either toxicity or terrible connections (or both; shout-outs to Super Smash Bros.). But Tekken 8 took a step to change this with its AI ghost system.
In Tekken 8, the game notes down your data while you play, and from there you can enter the ‘Super Ghost Battle’ mode, which allows you to take on an AI version of you. This mode is fantastic as a learning tool, as you can learn your flaws without having to pour over replay data, plus fighting a Super Ghost is way more engaging than the regular AI. While it is a great teaching tool, it had an unexpected effect, in that it allowed a Tekken player to preserve the ghost data of their brother who had passed away shortly after Tekken 8 launched last year with the help of Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada.
Harada spoke at GDC 2025, with translation by Michael Murray (who has also worked on the series since Tekken 4). During the panel ‘Tekken: Staying Relevant as a 30 Year Old Franchise’ – which was attended by GamesRadar+ – Harada spoke about this interaction. Murray said, “An unforeseen thing that kind of appeared out of this new technology, was also… a person in the community, their brother passed away, and they asked Harada if he could have a copy of the brother’s ghost, because it actually felt like he was playing against his brother to help him kind of remember those times.”
While it was definitely an emotional experience, this story also stuck out to Harada as an “example of some of the cool stuff that we can achieve with this new technology and maybe a glimpse of where fighting games are going.” He added, “maybe you don’t necessarily need an opponent who is human that has the exact same skill level as you to enjoy the game. There might be some kind of features like this that can provide a better experience overall.”
