We’re still a few months out from the much anticipated launch of SNK’s next fighting game Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, which will see a return after more than 25 years to one of the original fighting game franchises, Fatal Fury.
Back in August, SNK shared that the launch roster for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves would comprise of 17 fighters and while we’ve gradually seen trailers for characters in the game to the tune of 13 different combatants, we actually may been told more than some people realize.
First, let’s get down to brass tacks — the characters who have official trailers are obviously in the game. This includes Garou: Mark of the Wolves debuts Rock Howard, Hotaru Futaba, Tizoc, Marco Rodriguez, B. Jenet, Kevin Rian, Kim Dong Hwan and Gato.
We also have classic Fatal Fury characters Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui and Billy Kane all revealed as well as two brand new characters, Joe Higashi’s disciple Preecha and Grant’s disciple Vox Reaper.
That adds up to a total of 13 characters out of the 17 we’re supposed to have at launch. So what do I mean when I say we may already know the whole roster?
Well, for starters, there were a few characters shown way before we got any kind of trailers for the game. At Evo 2022 and Evo 2023 respectively, we got posters showcasing the two main protagonists of the game, Rock Howard in 2022 and Terry Bogard in 2023. However, in those posters, they weren’t standing alone.
As you can see in the posters above, they’re each joined by two other characters. While the faces are obscured in Rock’s poster, SNK fans with keen eyes can spot from the silhouettes that the closer person is Kain R. Heinlein, the boss character in Garou: Mark of the Wolves, while the one further back is Billy Kane who saw his reveal for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves back in July, sporting a brand new look but still brandishing his signature staff.
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On Terry’s poster, however, there’s actually no room for analyzing at all. The two figures standing with him are his long-standing King of Fighters teammates Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi, both with entirely new outfits as well.
While SNK haven’t explicitly confirmed that characters in the posters will be playable, it would be a truly bizarre move to show off returning fan favorite characters in promotional materials before we’ve even seen gameplay to then just… not have them.
I have a vague memory of hearing a quote several years ago that the poster characters were in fact confirmed playable, but it’s not a quote I can find again so I’ll assume it was a misquote. At any rate, I do believe that these characters were put there for a specific reason, and it’s so far in advance of the game’s release that I have a hard time believing they weren’t already solidly locked in to the roster before being put in these promotional posters.
So if we treat that theory as correct, that means Kain, Andy and Joe would be part of the roster as well, bringing the total up to 16. But wait, wasn’t the full launch roster supposed to be 17… ?
This is where another piece of evidence comes in — the first teaser trailer for the game. In this trailer, a map of South Town is showed and a lot of iconic voice lines for special moves and super attacks are played for the viewer. At the time of this trailer, Terry and Rock were clearly confirmed and they have gameplay shown after the map segment as well.
However, many other characters are present in this segment who had not yet been revealed at the time — but now, most of them have. Voice lines for Hotaru, B. Jenet, Tizoc, Marco, Kevin, Billy, Mai and Gato were all played and these characters have since been unveiled with their own trailers. But there was one more voice line for a character who has yet to be revealed — Andy’s student, Hokutomaru.
This isn’t iron-clad confirmation per se, but it is a strong indicator that if the posters do indeed confirm Kain, Andy and Joe and leave us with only one spot left to fill, that said spot could very well end up being Hokutomaru.
If this is indeed the case, it’d round out the entire launch roster for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. As someone who had been following this theory for a long time, I believed that we’d see a revival of Geese Howard as the last spot in the launch roster, but after one of Kim Kaphwan’s sons Kim Dong Hwan was revealed back in October, a character who hadn’t been shown in posters or the initial voice clip trailer, that filled out the roster in my mind.
There are still about two and a half months left until the release of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves so we will soon see if this indeed is the final roster. If it were, that would mean that three of Garou: Mark of the Wolves’ roster members, Kim Jae Hoon, Grant and Freeman, would be missing out on spots in this direct successor title.
That said, we’ve been told that there will likely be three whole seasons of post-launch content for the game and with the only confirmed DLC characters so far being Street Fighter’s Ken Masters and Chun-Li, there’s plenty of spots left not just for the Garou remnants but all kinds of old-school Fatal Fury characters who we haven’t seen in a while.
At the end of the day, I already have my two favorites (Terry and B. Jenet) in the roster, so I’m excited to see what’s coming up moreso than worried my favorites won’t make it. Who are you hoping to see join the fray in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves? Let us know in the comments.
Source: Event Hubs
