Namco Bandai commissioned Penny Arcade to create a webcomic to promote Tekken 6, and what they got seems to be a wistful look at the life of one of Tekken‘s most ridiculous fighters, Roger the boxing kangaroo.
Leave it to the dudes at Penny Arcade to make the nonsensical lore of Namco’s Tekken series not just funny and interesting, but weirdly poignant. For their Namco Bandai-commissioned webcomic series promoting the umpteenth game in the long-running Tekken series, the Penny Arcade crew decided not to devote their storytelling efforts to series stars like Jin Kazama or Eddy Gordo, but shine a light on a far more pitiable creature: Roger, the genetically engineered kangaroo that can box.
The splash page for the comic, which only runs two pages long so far, features a badass Roger uppercutting through the wing of a fighter jet while another falls to the sky in a blaze in the background, but once you “flip” the page (by dragging your mouse cursor across the virtual page corner), things get serious.
“My name is Roger Junior, so you can probably guess there’s a Roger Senior out there somewhere,” a kangaroo (evidently Roger’s son who attempted to save his dad in Tekken 5) says. “That’s my dad, not that he was much of a father. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe I should start at the beginning.”
The scene then switches to the Mishima labs, where series bad guy Kazuya Mishima is berating his scientists for genetically engineering him a fighting kangaroo instead of some uber-awesome super soldiers. So, as you can see none of the Rogers have ever been loved by anybody. Which I guess makes Roger the Blanka, or, uh, Hunchback of Notre Dame of Tekken. Doesn’t it just bring a tear to your eye?
