Tekken 7 Cut Kangaroo Fighter Roger Due To Animal Activist Pressures

Tekken 7 is old news in Japan (in particular arcades), but the game's arrival on US shores and worldwide has been a long time coming. We're less than two months away from the game's arrival, and as such interviews and assorted new information regarding the game and its staff have begun to surface.

Notable recently is an interview with Tekken 7 producer and director Katsuhiro Harada, who shed light on a wide array of topics in an interview with VG247. Notable toward the end of the interview is an explanation for why Kangaroo-boxer Roger, a series mainstay across several Tekken games, is absent from Tekken 7. Check out the excerpt below.

Meanwhile Roger Jr, the boxing kangaroo, has sadly been cut. “There was a video of a man’s dog being headlocked by a kangaroo, and he punched it in the face”, Harada says. “It turned into a big problem. People were complaining about him punching a kangaroo. It seems that in the last few years there’s a lot more animal activists – even though they probably wouldn’t play our game they would still hear about that, about a kangaroo in our game being punched, and would complain about it.” Kuma the bear is still in the game, though, because a bear is “obviously stronger than a human being.”

The timing of such a revelation is interesting, as it's a single day after PETA decided to call out Nintendo for its partnership with McDonald's distributing Super Mario-themed Happy Meal toys. Of course, Harada's reference to kangaroo-dog smackdowns is about as amusing as it is concerning, the end result being that I'd very much like to take a look at this video for myself. If Roger is any indication, kangaroos in general pack a serious wallop.

Tekken 7 is set to release on June 2nd worldwide, arriving on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Roger will be absent, but at least the presence of Kuma can hold players over until the boxing marsupial hopefully resurfaces at a later time.