That’s Big, Mr. Big
SNK has potentially the largest suite of fighting game properties in the business, and while many of them have been dormant for 20+ years, that seems to be slowly changing now.
Japanese publication Famitsu recently ran its New Year’s message column from developers across the country where there were some interesting statements coming out of SNK not only about Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves — but apparently a brand new Art of Fighting game in the works too.
The most head-turning pieces of information from the posts came from famed SNK and former Capcom Producer Yasuyuki Oda, who had a bit to say on the upcoming projects.
“2024 is going to be the year in which we’ll fully unveil ‘Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves’,” said Oda that we’ve translated. “We’re doing our best to create content that all fighting game fans will enjoy.
At our new head office that’s been moved to Shin-Osaka, we are also working on other projects such as ‘Fist of the Dragon and Tiger’ at the same time. We are actively hiring more staff as well, so please apply.”
For those who don’t know, Fist of the Dragon and Tiger or Ryūko no Ken is the original Japanese title for the Art of Fighting games, and this revelation is hopefully going to be quite exciting to longtime SNK fans.
First introduced to the world in 1992, Art of Fighting followed in the footsteps of the first Fatal Fury to introduce much of the world to SNK’s great sprite work as well as iconic characters like Ryo Sakazaki, his sister Yuri, Robert Garcia, King, Mr. Karate and more.
While most of them have basically transferred over to the rosters of The King of Fighters, Art of Fighting received its last mainline entry all the way back in 1996 with the third game — though there’s been multiple re-releases and anthology sets since.
If Art of Fighting turns out to be a fighting game as well, that would make three of their original arcade pillars SNK has revived in the company’s latest incarnation from Samurai Shodown to the upcoming Fatal Fury as well — which the developers seem to be fully and openly referring to as a fighting game now as well if there was any doubts left there.
It is also nice to know that City of the Wolves is going to be getting more information and more than likely gameplay debuted over the course of 2024 considering we’ve only really seen some art and short snippets of footage up to this point.
We apparently shouldn’t expect to see Fatal Fury actually launch next year, however, as SNK’s Nobuyuki Kuroki also featured in the Famitsu column where he stated its “release date is still a long way off.”
In the meantime, we can probably expect a third season of content is coming soon for The King of Fighters 15 early next year that we’ll more than likely learn about at the upcoming world finals.
Since being completely purchased by Saudi Arabia’s Electronic Gaming Development Company over the past few years, SNK has been expanding and moved their headquarters earlier in 2023 from the building they’d basically been in since 1978.
The storied developers seem to have more projects being worked on behind closed doors that we haven’t seen including at least one they’re referring to as a AAA title.
Though new Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting titles are great for the hardcore fighting game audience, it’s going to be supremely interesting to see what SNK will be doing in the coming years to expand its portfolio for other games and genres — plus what impact all of this is going to have on their core fighters.
With them apparently still staffing up, we probably won’t see Art of Fighting until at least 2025, but 2024 is looking like a pretty exciting year for SNK fans, especially with this new information.