Asuka Kazama And Leroy Smith Join Tekken 8 Over The Weekend

gameranx.com:

Namco Bandai have confirmed Leroy Smith and Asuka Kazama as returning characters for Tekken 8.

Leroy Smith is the newer character of the two, which certainly seems ironic since Asuka Kazama is supposedly still not an adult at the time of this game. But I’ll explain.

In his biography, Leroy emigrated from New York to Hong Kong fifty years ago, because of the burgeoning New York crime scene that killed his family and ruined his life.

When he returns, he’s already an older man, and a Wing Chun master. He learns that the messy situation in New York when he grew up was the responsibility of the Mishima Zaibatsu, specifically Heihachi Mishima, so like many a Tekken fighter, he seeks revenge from the Mishima family.

For over a decade ago, Tekken lead Katsuhiro Harada stated that he didn’t want to add Ip Man or Ip Man’s martial art, Wing Chun, into Tekken. Marshall and Forrest Law’s situation was different, because as Harada saw it, they used Bruce Lee’s original martial art, Jeet Kune Do. I’ll let you read the reason Harada didn’t want to add Wing Chun here.

However, in 2019, he surprised fans by adding Leroy Smith as a DLC character for Tekken 7. As he explained, the ‘Grandfather of Drip’ was entirely his idea. This was his way of adding Wing Chun into the Tekken franchise.

Leroy Smith’s design was quite clever for Harada, as it tapped a long underserved fandom for blaxploitation in the video game sphere. Blaxploitation as a genre had its roots in the 1970s with Jim Kelly as Black Belt Jones. But, one could argue, the genre never really went away through the decades (The Last Dragon, Blade, Romeo Must Die, The Man With The Iron Fists).

Asuka Kazama is technically the veteran fighter, in spite of being a considerably younger