Developer interview: Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves

During Gamescom, one of our highlights was the ability to meet with SNK – longtime pioneers of the fighting game genre and the publisher of legendary titles like Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury and King of Fighters. They’re currently working on Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, which comes out on April 24, 2025. Eight months before that release, we had an extended gameplay session for the game, as well as a sitdown with Chief Producer Yasuyuki Oda, Producer Joshua Weatherford and Producer Jonathan Campanato. Here’s what we learned.

It’s great to see a new Fatal Fury. What inspired SNK to bring the series back with “City of the Wolves”?

We’ve wanted to bring back Fatal Fury for the longest time, but it’s all just about timing. They wanted to get Samurai Shodown out, as well as other IPs like King of Fighters, and they felt now is the best time for Fatal Fury.

One of the other things we’ve said in the past is that by doing games like Samurai Shodown and now Fatal Fury, we’re also setting the building blocks for the next generation of King of Fighters, because it’s always been that sort of natural evolution of all our IPs and they all converge on the all-star game that is King of Fighters. That’s kind of the long term idea, bringing them all back and allowing the next gen of King of Fighters to grow even bigger.

How are you modernizing the game while staying true to the elements that long-time fans cherish?

Of course, right now, modern gamers expect more of an e-sports scene to come with their fighting games. They don’t want just a one-off and have that be it. So with that expectation there’s going to be some slight differences to when Mark of the Wolves first came out and how we just released the game and that was it – no balance patches, for example. Now, players can kind of see the game evolve as it continues on, adapting to the esports scene.

The Fatal Fury franchise is known for its rich lore and deep character connections. How does “City of the Wolves” expand on this?

We were kind of lucky because the first game ended on a bunch of cliffhangers for a lot of characters, so it already had the building blocks for a sequel. We actually did have one planned as well – we were gonna make a Mark of the Wolves, Part 2. Unfortunately those plans were sidelined, but now with this newest game, City of the Wolves, we have another chance to go back to the story and reintroduce some more elements. One of the good things about that is that a lot of the people that worked on the story in the first game, and worked on the original sequel plans, are still working at the company. So we have a lot of those ideas, but this gives us a chance to go back over the story and tailor it a little bit to modern expectations.

Why not do Mark of the Wolves 2?

We were definitely thinking about that, but the industry has moved along since the previous game. Instead of just doing Mark of the Wolves 2, we wanted to have a new Fatal Fury sequel, to continue the storyline that way instead of doing Mark of the Wolves 2, as so much time has gone by.

If we had done a direct sequel years ago, then obviously the people who’ve played Mark of the Wolves would know what’s going on, but it’s so long and we wanted to make sure it’s also a good entry point for anybody who’s never played the series before.

Could you explain the rationale behind the new REV mechanic?

In fighting games, you traditionally do special moves, and your power gauge gradually increases and before it allows you to do a super special move for more damage. That’s traditionally how fighting games have been, but recently we’ve seen a trend where players want a lot of the resources up front and decide how they want to use it instead of building it up and using it in one final blast. We want to give players more options at the very beginning of the match, and also wanted to tailor it to have more of a Fatal Fury style to it – which became the current REV system in City of the Wolves.

The Episodes of South Town mode introduces RPG elements to the series. Can you elaborate on how this mode works?

There are two main things that we can talk about. The first is South Town, the actual fabled place in Fatal Fury that has been a reference throughout the games a bunch of times, even though players have only seen a glimpse of it so far. In this case, for this new mode, we give players the opportunity to actually dive down into South Town and see all the places that have been referenced in other games and actually go through it and see certain characters there. And those characters, when you play them, have unique dialogues through their interactions.

There are a lot of fighting game players that really just want to play the game for the story. They want to play for the characters and the setting, so we have this mode specifically for single player gamers, who just want to play alone and explore the world of Fatal Fury.

Does this happen through a kind of overworld?

This time, you actually have a world map. You’re able to choose where you want to go and you have places that are referenced in Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, including Second South Town. You can actually go there and you can go to the stages that are selected in these areas and experience them, seeing which characters are in those certain areas as the plotline develops.

What are the most significant changes in the fighting game landscape since the original Fatal Fury games, and how did these changes influence the design of “City of the Wolves”?

Fatal Fury is definitely unique in that the gameplay changes with each single game. More combos, different kinds of special moves, all of these have always been changing. For this latest one we took all the things we really enjoyed from all these past Fatal Fury games and put them all into one game. Kind of like a celebration of the series.

As many will know, Yasuyuki Oda has been involved in revitalizing classic SNK franchises before – how does this experience influence your approach to “Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves”?

What helps is the transfer of know-how, of how to make a fighting game from the very beginning. With a good idea of what a fighting game should look like already in the back of your head, you’re able to start right away without having to go through studying or trying to figure things out. We have a very good idea of what a fighting game should be, so we’re able to start off with a good wind behind our back in development.

What have been some of the bigger challenges during the development of the game?

So our studio is still growing, and for City of the Wolves we have a lot of younger staff working with us who have just been hired. Their concept and understanding of what Mai and Terry should be like comes from King of Fighters, because they played a lot of that. When actually, Fatal Fury is a little bit slower, with more emphasis behind the hits. For us, that meant having to break through their mold and go “actually, this is how these characters really should be playing”. Getting the core foundations set for each of the newer/younger developers was definitely a difficult task in this sense.

Beyond just the gameplay, these characters also have personalities that are very different in King of Fighters compared to Fatal Fury. So you end up having to explain that “No, Mai wouldn’t do that in Fatal Fury, that’s King of Fighters’ vibe.” It’s stuff like that, and personality-wise, even from a long time ago, these characters have been radically different between different games.

One last development thing to mention from our side is that this is the first time we did English voice acting in one of our games. It wasn’t that difficult, but it was a learning experience. A good experience, it was fun, and I think everybody’s been very happy with the English voice acting so far. So it was a lot of work, but it was worth it.