This Week in Games

Can't Ask Harada for Nothin'

Welcome back, folks! I was able to greatly enjoy my birthday weekend. I didn't get to beat Future Redeemed like I hoped, but hey, progress was made. I was even able to finish my Tekkaman Blade model kit! I'd look forward to maybe finishing Future Redeemed before years' end, but I suddenly have a game review to work on—look forward to that one!

Katsuhiro Harada, famed director of Bandai Namco's Tekken series, shocked the world earlier this week with the revelation that he would be leaving Bandai Namco after 30 years. Harada-san's retirement takes effect at the end of 2025.

Harada-san has worked with Bandai Namco (then just Namco) since he graduated from college. But even at a young age, he was dedicated to cultivating Tekken's audience, reaching out to fans at local arcades and events, and spreading the word about the game. Harada-san's efforts made him director of the Tekken games starting with Tekken 3 in 1997, a duty he's shouldered since then with superlative efforts. While there are many things folks can disagree with him about, few developers match Harada-san's mix of being precisely vocal and informative about back-door decisions in their games; Harada-san is quick to bring hard data and expertise to resolve lingering questions or doubts within the community. At a time when many developers are getting laid off from their studios, and fewer developers remain working on the games that they helped launch, Harada-san was an old warhorse of the industry—and one that the fanbase looked up to. Harada-san never stopped working to grow Tekken's fanbase, going so far as to celebrate popular streamer Lily Pichu after she took up Tekken—to say nothing of actually playing a best-of-five match against her, which he gracefully lost.

Harada-san cited the loss of "several close friends from [his] personal life" (likely including the recent untimely passing of Tomonobu Itagaki), which has forced him to reevaluate the time he has left as a creator. His decision to retire came after seeking counsel from none other than Ken Kutaragi, the "Father of the PlayStation." (It's worth noting, Tekken was a major franchise for the PlayStation in its early days.) I jive with that answer; thirty years working with one franchise is an eternity, especially in the game industry. Harada-san is so far mum about any upcoming project, but promises more news in the future.

Understandably, there is a lot of concern over what this might mean for the Tekken games. It's worth remembering that games are not the work of a single creative but of a collective effort; while Harada-san did work as a director, he had whole teams beneath him whose contributions are just as influential. He had also noted that he had been delegating many of the intricacies of the Tekken games to people working under him. For what it's worth, being that I'm not particularly enmeshed in the Tekken community, I have faith in Harada-san's decisions as to who is taking charge of what in his absence.

Of course, there's also concern given Bandai Namco's relatively poor track record with its own franchises. Sure, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is doing pretty well now—but it took a lot to get to this point. Digimon fans were suffering for a while—and in the meantime, so are Tales of... fans, Soulcalibur fans, and so on. Name a fandom associated with Bandai Namco, and I'll show you a fandom that has gripes with how Bandai Namco has handled the property. The upside of Harada-san being so closely attached to Tekken was that Tekken had someone to champion it at Bandai Namco. That can be the difference between life and death for an IP at any company. While Tekken 8 might be in good hands, I don't blame people for being concerned about Tekken's future.

Regardless, I look forward to what Harada-san's new ventures will become. He's a smart man with a library of insight, someone who has earned every ounce of goodwill the fanbase has given him. For bonus points: Harada-san, who has dreamed of DJing at a fighting game tournament, composed an hour-long DJ mix based on the series. (Just think: in another time, Harada-san might have become a major figure in Japan's underground music scene...).

Man. We really can't ask Harada for shit anymore.

It's not often we can get otome news, but we've got a doozy this week! Anime fans might remember 2012's La storia della Arcana Famiglia, an anime about a young woman named Felicita going to the Italian-esque island-city of Regalo and meeting the Arcana Famiglia organized family. While the Arcanas are normally responsible for protecting the local population, they're also scheduling a tournament to see which member of the Arcanas gets to marry Felicita. Meanwhile, Felicita enters the tournament herself to show that she's capable of taking care of herself. It's a fun set-up for an otome game, hence the anime adaptation; the original Arcana Famiglia released on the PSP back in 2011. While a Nintendo Switch port launched this past summer, we've also got the reveal that it's coming to Steam this upcoming February 2026!

La storia della Arcana Famiglia plays out with manga-esque scenes, complete with panels and speech bubbles. Occasionally, scenes will feature interactive segments in which Felicita can use her abilities to engage in battles. Her actions grant her Amore; having the requisite Amore rating on specific days allows certain scenes to unfold. The Steam release, like the Switch release, will feature language options in English, Japanese, or Chinese. Something to look forward to during the new year!

The only reason I know about Brown Dust2 is because some Discord friends of mine are all-in on the game—and the reason they're all-in on Brown Dust 2 is because Brown Dust 2 is a mobile game with a ton of extremely suggestive character art. A lot of it isn't particularly subtle, either, like one character animation where they end up spread-eagled in front of a pool's water jet. I'm not passing judgment on the game; I've imported way too much smut from Comiket for that. But I have to wonder what sense it makes to make a mobile game that presents barriers to playing it in public.

Brown Dust 2 was planning a release on Steam—I say "was" because studio Neowiz announced that those plans have now been dashed. While Brown Dust 2 does have a PC launcher, the Steam version has been cancelled for what Neowiz calls "an issue that cannot be reasonably resolved with the current version of the game."

Neowiz's statement is vague to the point of being borderline useless, but the gist is that they hit a snag during "coordination with the platform's policy requirements." Which could be just about anything. While that could easily include the game's content, it could also include their monetization or even how they decided to handle multiplayer.

To be fair: we've been covering Steam's sloppy (and unfair) handling of games for a long time; seemingly all it takes for a game to get 86ed from Steam is just being too colorful for a particular person on a given day (see: Chaos;Head). And while I don't really have much interest in Brown Dust 2, I do hate that its attempts to find another PC platform would mean choosing something with drastically less visibility than Steam. But I also get the feeling that this isn't inherently due to Brown Dust 2's content. I mean, yes, you can't play it in public, but also, Brown Dust 2 doesn't feature any explicit material. It goes up to the line as hard as it can without actually showing a nipple or a vagina, so much so that it's pretty damn blatant... but it bears noting that there are games that are nevertheless more explicit than Brown Dust 2 on Steam.

Several possibilities come to mind (though they should be taken with a grain of salt): the former is that Neowiz got in trouble with Steam regarding their wishlist campaign (offering in-game rewards if the game reached a certain number of wishlist requests). Reading their press release confirms they had wishlist milestones. While I've yet to find any hard rules on wishlist campaigns, I wouldn't be surprised if Steam has strict rules against incentivizing wishlists. On the one hand, Nexon got into trouble for doing a similar campaign with Blue Archive's user reviews. On the other hand, that was for user reviews, not wishlists. So the whole thing is tentative. The other possibility was that Steam wanted to list Brown Dust 2 as an adult-only title, given how blatantly the game's content straddles the line. Neowiz likely refused to allow for that classification, since being an adult-only title restricts the audience, but getting the game rated any lower would've required changes to the artwork. There are, of course, the long-standing issues with payment processors mucking up the online buying experience for people wanting to buy stuff; their decisions have long been inconsistent.

In the meantime, we can only speculate as to the reasons behind Brown Dust 2's Steam cancellation, but at least there's still a dedicated PC launcher.

For my money, a new shooter is something worth celebrating! Lots of people have forgotten, or never learned, the pleasure of a good shooter: tight controls, kickass music, the hint of memorable enemy waves, and the allure of beating your own personal best. Lots of shooters have come and gone, but a lot of them are sadly lost to the sands of time: Konami occasionally trots out Gradius now and then. Still, we haven't seen a proper new Darius since 2015 (This Week in Games alums Heidi Kemps probably has words about that). Heck, we haven't even seen a new Thunder Force since 2008. We can thank ININ for working closely with the remnants of IREM, though: we're getting a new R-Type!

Where Gradius prided itself on its punishing difficulty and novel power-up system, or Darius with its novel wide-screens and fish-enemies, R-Type made its name off of bio-technological horror and deliberate, strategic positioning. You and your ship of choice (among them, the iconic R-9 fighter) blast off and strike the evil Bydo Empire, an infectious, all-consuming post-human amalgamation of assimilated flesh and machines created by humans in the future (long story). Your two aces in the hole are a Space Battleship Yamato-esque literal Wave Cannon, and the mysterious Forces: Bydo embryos that can shield from enemy fire, modify your own weaponry, or even be shot out as weaponry (and later retrieved). The horrific nature of the Bydo Empire is half the appeal, not the least of which is the iconic recurring boss, the Xenomorph-esque Dobkeratops. The other is the tense nature of the game: with all of your versatility, levels are slow and deliberate. Positioning and memorizing level changes are key, as you can find yourself just as much at risk from level geometry shifting on you as from rogue enemy waves. Knowing when and where to position yourself—and when to charge your Wave Cannon—is key.

R-Type Dimensions III is itself an updated remake of the original R-Type III, featuring painstakingly re-created levels, music, and sound effects from the original title. In a very loving move, you can even switch between the original game's graphics and music and the updated recreations. Co-op has also been added, along with an advanced mode and camera options. It blasts off for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2, and Steam this May 2026—and will even get a physical release on consoles!

That'll do it for this week. At the time of writing, The Game Awards haven't happened yet; they run up just after our cut-off, and so we'll leave that mess to be discussed this week. There will likely be tons of trailers to talk about. Be good to each other. I'll see you in seven!