Scott McCrae
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In the pantheon of fighting games – a genre in which the community typically moves along once a new entry arrives – there are those specific games that stand above the others and maintain a legendary status. Games like Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and Capcom Vs. SNK 2 have maintained huge communities in the 20-plus years since they launched and are held in high regard by the fighting game community to this day. There’s one more example with a particularly mythic status: SNK’s 1999 classic Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which was not only was a soft-reboot of the Fatal Fury series but also the last of that series to ever release, as SNK shifted focus onto The King of Fighters as its premiere fighting game franchise.
For years and years, I’ve been waiting on a follow-up to Mark of the Wolves – which was apparently nearly complete before SNK went bankrupt back in 2001. Every single time EVO would come around and SNK would hit the stage with a new announcement, only for it to be a new Samurai Shodown or King of Fighters (both of which were bangers, mind you), I’d be disappointed. SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda, who also led development on KOF and Samurai Shodown, has been vocal about wanting to return to the game, outright saying in 2022 that he “went back to SNK to complete Garou”. This finally came to pass at EVO later that year, when Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was confirmed.
After a couple more trailers throughout 2023, and making its first playable appearance at EVO Japan earlier this year, City of the Wolves was confirmed for a Summer Game Fest appearance. So, after finding out I was going to the event this year, naturally the very first appointment I made was going to be the fighting game I’ve waited 25 years for (okay, I only played Garou for the first time like 6 years ago, but it’s far more dramatic to put it that way). And after getting to play the game, there’s no better way to describe it than hot damn, they nailed it.
After the demo I had the chance to talk to Yasuyuki Oda, Art Supervisor Nobuyuki Kuroki, and SNK Producer Joshua Weatherford. Naturally the first thing that I wanted to know was ‘what took so long?’ While SNK went through some major changes – including the aforementioned bankruptcy – in the time since the previous entry, it doesn’t seem like there was some external force holding back a new Fatal Fury game at all. In fact, it was just a matter of waiting its turn.
Following the release of Garou, both men went off to work at another fighting game studio, Dimps, with Oda being involved in another fighting game revival in Street Fighter 4 – the game credited with reviving the genre. “From there, the priority was definitely KOF and also revitalising other IPs like Samurai Shodown, and making other games – like SNK Heroines – as well and just basically building up the experience from there,” Oda explains. “Fatal Fury’s turn came to make it the next title to be reborn”.
Even the most safe sequels can feel remarkably different from the games that preceded them, and while City of the Wolves obviously has differences from its predecessor, I was able to pick it up and go to town with Terry Bogard like it was second nature. But for those who aren’t as versed in fighters, SNK has also included a Smart Style reminiscent of simplified control schemes in its contemporaries.
City of the Wolves keeps everything that made the original such an enduring classic. It’s fast paced, hits are nice and weighty, and the fantastic T.O.P system (a mechanic in which players would choose a specific third of their health gauge, which would then unlock specific moves when your vitality reaches that level) returns as the S.P.G. system, which has been expanded to include the likes of air attacks.
Following up on a fighting game is undoubtedly stressful for those involved, but when it comes to one held in such high regard, I imagine the pressure is likely to amplify tenfold. Kuroki agrees with this sentiment. As a SNK veteran, he worked on the Real Bout Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting Games, but when he returned to the company and took on roles in the development of King of Fighters 14 and Samurai Shodown, which he hadn’t worked on before, he saw it as “more of a fresh experience, which didn’t really have that personal pressure.” However, with a Garou follow up, he feels the pressure. As Weatherford tells me, “He’s the one that goes out to events and gets asked a lot, like, ‘what’s gonna happen with Fatal Fury? What’s gonna happen with the Garou sequel?'”
Plus, fighting games are going through a bit of a renaissance right now, with the last few years giving us Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Guilty Gear Strive (Mortal Kombat 1 too, but they can’t all be winners). I asked if the ‘competition’ was putting extra pressure on them, but it turns out that the team actually has the opposite viewpoint. “It just means more fans of the genre all around”, Weatherford said, adding, “we’re very confident in our quality for sure… we always see it as just a kind of like a rising tide raises all ships sort of thing.”
Speaking of Street Fighter 6, we also got the news that the Street Fighter series was introducing the first ever guest characters in a mainline entry – none other than Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui. After losing my mind over the announcement, I had to ask the obvious follow-up: is SNK looking to return the favour with any guests in City of the Wolves? “We’re always interested in exploring it, and we always have fun taking other people’s characters and bringing them into our world,” Oda says, noncommittal.
The roster in City of the Wolves is as great as ever. I got to check out Terry, Rock Howard, and Marco Rodrigues (who you might know better as ‘Butt’ from the original game), as well as the two newcomers Preecha, and Vox Reaper. As I’ve established, the old characters feel just right, and you’ll have no trouble picking them back up (honestly, I may have to become a Marco main, he’s absolutely sick in this build).
The new characters both fit right in too. Preecha’s playstyle is an homage to Joe, while carving out her own place in the series, much the same as Street Fighter 6’s Lily adapted T.Hawk’s moveset to a modern style. Meanwhile, Vox Reaper (protege of Garou villain Grant) is some good old noughties edge, the embodiment of a Linkin Park anime AMV your best pal would show you during computing class, with some Shadow the Hedgehog-esque lines coming out of his mouth, and the classic ‘teleports behind you’ move that no edgy fan character was complete without. I’m ragging on him, but I absolutely love Vox Reaper.
City of the Wolves also looks to be bringing back some classic Fatal Fury characters who missed out on Garou’s near-complete roster reset – like Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi, who have been teased. Of course, I had to ask if this meant that Geese Howard (who is long dead in the Fatal Fury story by this point) had any hopes of returning. Both of them told me they would love to have him back, but they would need to find a way that works within the plot. I suggested Robot Geese and was met with polite laughter, so here’s hoping that pans out.
A big talking point in regards to some recent SNK fighters has been the visual style, and while City of the Wolves won’t match up to the likes of Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, we’re leagues ahead of The King of Fighters 14, with Kuroki admitting there’s “always been a few spots that weren’t up to even their quality standards.” I was also told that making a distinct art style was the goal from the beginning, with the game adopting an American comic-style shader (which was described to me as one of the biggest challenges early in the project). However, this is one aspect I’m not as keen on – not because it looked bad, but because that style doesn’t feel like it’s being fully utilised outside of the super animations. I would rather the game go even harder with it, as it’s a slightly jarring jump when it does flash up.
Ultimately, we’re still a while out from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves’ ‘early 2025’ release date, so it’s hard to give a final judgement call, but SNK seems to be making all of the right moves with this sequel. The team seems to be aware of what made the original so special, Rollback Netcode and Crossplay are already confirmed (the lack of which ruined Samurai Shodown 2019 for me), and most importantly, it feels damn good to play. Fighting game fans have been eating well as of late, and SNK could be adding its magnum opus to the menu.