Over the past generation of fighting games, no developer seemed to push harder for crossovers with their characters than SNK, which gave fans a bunch of cool clashes they never thought possible before.
After getting my hands on the first Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves demo, I got to speak with Director Hayato Konya and veteran Producer Yasuyuki Oda where I asked them directly about SNK’s crossovers.
It’s not a simple task to let a group of outside creators put their own spin on something of yours, but SNK’s allowed a bunch of other major players in the space to use their icons.
There was of course Terry Bogard’s surprise inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Geese Howard showing the Tekken 7 cast who’s the boss, but there were a handful of others too within the past decade.
Terry also showed up in Fighting EX Layer as a special DLC character as well as Samurai Shodown’s Haohmaru in Soul Calibur 6, Iori Yagami in Million Arthur: Arcana Blood and maybe even a few more that I’m forgetting off the top of my head.
So I asked Oda and Konya about their favorite interpretations of their characters in these crossovers (excluding old titles like Capcom vs. SNK), and this is what they had to say.
“I really can’t choose just one,” said Oda “They’ve all done such a good job with our characters, and there’s stuff that a lot of people haven’t seen in like the Chinese mobile app scene and such. If I had to give an answer, I’d say the reveal of Geese in Tekken 7 was really amazing the way they showed him at Evo.”
A pretty expected answer, but at least he gave something more specific, which also wasn’t that surprising, considering the Geese announcement was probably one of the best the genre has seen in more modern times (especially with the crowd reaction).
The Director’s sentiments were much the same.
“I’m the same as Oda-san,” responded Konya. “I like all of them though I don’t work on much with the collaboration stuff right now.”
Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I could ask any follow-up questions about the crossovers and if SNK views them as a success, but from the outside looking in, it seems the push probably helped them out at least a little bit.
SNK was trying to re-establish itself on the fighting game scene with The King of Fighters 14 and then SamSho, so these crossovers helped expose more players to their characters they may have only seen in passing before.
Whether that trend continues for the developers in the near future remains to be seen since they may have already accomplished their initial goals, but we’ve still yet to receive a new crossover with Capcom (outside of the mobile game space at least).
Oda previously appeared as a guest on Harada’s Bar a few years ago where Katsuhiro Harada revealed his team origianlly wanted to get Ryuji Yamazaki as the SNK crossover for Tekken 7 though that obviously didn’t happen.
I was also able to ask Oda about Terry’s inclusion in Smash Ultimate, to which the SNK veteran had one specific complaint about the collaboration.
We recently saw a pretty weird crossover too where Mai Shiranui showed up in a mobile zombie game, but specifically her King of Fighters ’97 version because that’s still the most popular entry in China.
You can find a larger interview with Oda and Konya here where we specifically talked about the new Fatal Fury game and why it’s coming back now.
