After basically 25 years, Fatal Fury is coming back in a big way, and some of the developers who made Garou: Mark of the Wolves are helping to make it a reality.
One such person is of course Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Producer Yasuyuki Oda, who originally joined SNK over 30 years ago, and that I recently had the chance to interview about his studio and its competition.
While they weren’t going to talk about any new potential crossovers, I was able to ask Oda about their current relationship with Capcom since he worked closely with them at Dimps and Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama being a big SNK fan as well as the other developers in their space.
Oda did, however, previously tell me about his thoughts on Terry Bogard’s inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as well as his favorite SNK crossovers from the recent past.
We also discussed what the competition and landscape is like now compared to the ’90s arcade days as a veteran of the industry as well as what’s impressing him when looking at the other major studios — plus where SNK may have an edge over them.
And then we also had to have a little fun and ask about the creation of characters like Fatal Cutie Terry and Miss X.
The previous part of our interview with Oda and Fatal Fury Director Hayato Konya focused more on the new game itself and bringing it back now, and we of course have our in-depth impressions after going hands-on with City of the Wolves too.
You can check out the final big chunk of our exclusive interview below.
DarkHorse: Between SNK, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Arc System Works, NetherRealm Studios and beyond, the competition in the fighting game market is looking really strong. Do you think the current lineup of fighters is stronger than what we saw in the early-mid ’90s?
Oda: Yes, I think in general there’s a lot more studios working on big stuff compared to back in the day. Back then, we really only focused on Japan too because it was a lot harder to get information from overseas. So definitely taking things from a global perspective has changed it a lot for everybody.
DarkHorse: What’s something that’s really impressed you from looking at the other fighting game developers?
Oda: Oda: Looking at especially Capcom and Bandai Namco, their development scale is so big for a fighting game that it’s very impressive.
DarkHorse: Where do you think SNK has an advantage over its competitors?
Oda: Oda: I feel like we’ve got a lot of IPs and series that are famous with iconic characters, but you see mostly because of the scale getting so much larger in terms of development that you see studios only focus on one title. We kind of try and branch out into a lot of various games and plan to continue doing that going forward. We see that as a strength on our side.
DarkHorse: We’ve seen SNK vs. Capcom NeoGeo Pocket Color games re-release. Street Fighter’s Nakayama-san is a big SNK fan and Oda-san has worked closely with Capcom in the past. What’s the relationship like currently between the two companies?
Oda: Oda: It’s not limited only to Capcom, but we’re on good terms with all of the different developers in Japan especially. We meet with them pretty often and such, but just on good terms in general.
DarkHorse: Has the Japan fighting game publisher roundtable events helped bring the Japanese fighting game development scene more together?
Oda: Oda: Yes, that was definitely a good movement for the genre. It’s always good to meet up with the other people in our line of work around the industry.
DarkHorse: We’ve seen Fatal Cutie Terry and Miss X plus some more in All-star previously. Do you know how these designs came about and are we going to see more swaps?
Oda: Oda: These crazy ideas just sometimes come out of nowhere (laughs).