Tekken 8 to resurrect Heihachi Mishima for the franchise’s 30th anniversary 

You can’t keep a good villain/hero down, and in Tekken’s case, that person is Heihachi Mishima. Noticeably absent from Tekken 8’s core roster, Heihachi returns as the game’s third playable DLC character in the game’s first season. 

When players last saw Heihachi, he was defeated by his son Kazuya and tossed into a volcano (this seems to be a recurring thing in the Mishima family). In the Tekken 8 Heihachi Mishima trailer, we can see Heihachi as the leader of a group known as the Tekken Monks. These monks seem to have been training in Korean backdashes and electric attacks under Heihachi to take down the remnants of the Mishima Zaibatsu – a worldwide business conglomerate formerly headed by Heihachi and Kazuya on separate occasions.

Apart from coinciding with the Tekken franchise’s 30^th anniversary, Heihachi’s return looks like it will advance the Tekken storyline as well. DLC characters Eddie Gordo and Lidia Sobieska can be seen interacting with the rest of the cast, with Heihachi proclaiming his name to those who don’t know it yet.  

Heihachi now joins Street Fighter’s M. Bison as another recent fighting game character that was killed off but eventually resurrected in their associated franchise. He will be playable in Tekken 8 sometime this autumn. 

Tekken 8 is available for the PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.