We’re getting closer and coser to the release of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves and while we’re still not entirely sure of what the 17-character launch roster will look like, I made my case last week for which characters I believe will round it out.
Outside of the launch roster, there’s another burning question at the forefront of our minds — the Season Pass DLC roster. We’ve already been told that two of the slots are guest characters Ken Masters and Chun-Li from Street Fighter, but what about the remaining three? Well, there’s some room to discuss that, so let’s get into the nitty gritty.
For the purposes of my speculation in this article, I’m going to refrain from expecting any more out-of-company guest characters like Ken and Chun-Li. To me, that seems to be a pure exchange between Capcom and SNK for this game and Street Fighter 6 and while SNK are certainly no strangers to guest characters in their rosters, I do believe that the rest of this pass will be focused on Fatal Fury characters.
Although there are only three slots available for this season (though reportedly there are more seasons planned already), I’m going to make the cases for some different areas of characters and which ones I think are most likely within those categories.
Although Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a new Fatal Fury game, there’s no doubt that the aesthetics and general approach of the game is highly tied to the last game in the series, Garou: Mark of the Wolves.
While it might seem like Garou is a different franchise, that is actually not the case. In Japan, the series never changed its name and the title Garou overseas was meant more as a rebranding attempt due to the massive time skip and roster change compared to older Fatal Fury games.
With that said, it’s very clear that although Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a sequel to the full franchise of Fatal Fury, its aesthetics and general approach is very clearly focused on where Garou: Mark of the Wolves left off and the currently known roster very much reflects that.
The characters who are currently missing from the Garou roster are Kain R. Heinlein, Hokutomaru, Kim Jae Hoon, Grant and Freeman. In my previous article, I articulated why I strongly believe that both Kain and Hokutomaru are actually part of the launch roster, so if I continue to operate from that assumption, that leaves only three.
I’m very certain that we’ll eventually see the full Garou cast in the roster of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, but I doubt all three slots will go to characters from it. To me, the most likely one seems to be Grant due to his strong connection to antagonist Kain, with Kim Jae Hoon being second most likely as an early addition since his brother Kim Dong Hwan has already been revealed as part of the launch roster.
I definitely think that Freeman will eventually be part of the roster, but I also think that he’ll have to wait the longest. He never really stuck out much in Garou: Mark of the Wolves roster, so it would be nice to see SNK put some extra time into revamping him and making him shine.
Fatal Fury is a series with a vast amount of characters spanning its long run. In fact, so many characters originated from Fatal Fury that there are probably a lot of King of Fighters fans that aren’t even aware just how many of the mainstays and popular picks in that franchise actually originally appeared in Fatal Fury.
There are definitely a few deep cut potential picks from Fatal Fury who either rarely or never appeared in King of Fighters, but since SNK are going to be trying to appeal to as many consumers as possible, especially at this early stage of the game, I’m leaning much more towards characters who are also famous through the King of Fighters franchise being picks for Season 1.
The main character I believe we’ll see as soon as possible is Mary Ryan, also known as “Blue Mary”. For all intents and purposes, she’s basically presented as Terry Bogard’s girlfriend even though they never explicitly state that they have that type of relationship.
In the picture above, you can even see that unlike most other Fatal Fury characters, Mary even has a design for the Garou era which was shown in “Memories of Stray Wolves”, a animation project that SNK made for the 15th year anniversary of Fatal Fury. You can see that Mary has different clothes than she’s usually known for and also sports somewhat longer hair than usual.
With this, she’s been clearly established to still be around and a part of Terry’s life even during the time of Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which is significantly later than the other Fatal Fury games. This clearly means you don’t need to present any story reasons for her presence, since she’s already been shown to be around.
Much more so than that, though, Mary is just a really popular character so it’s hard to imagine SNK not capitalizing on that now that they’re making a new Fatal Fury game after over 25 years. Especially since she’s become close to mainstay status in the King of Fighters series, making her very recognizable to fighting game fans in general.
Besides Blue Mary, another character I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see is Ryuji Yamazaki. A frequent cast member in King of Fighters, he’s almost always paired together with Billy Kane on teams as Geese Howard’s underlings and since we already know Billy is back for Garou, Yamazaki may not be too far away either.
Yamazaki also has his origins in Fatal Fury, actually debuting together with Blue Mary back in Fatal Fury 3. His long-standing enmity with Terry is more than enough reason for him to show up and cause some havoc even if Geese stays gone.
Speaking of Geese, one of the most obvious picks that we have to talk about is the prospect of reviving Geese Howard. Although he’s been dead in Fatal Fury for a very long time (King of Fighters is actually something of a parallel universe, you see), death doesn’t seem to be very in-fashion lately with last year seeing both Street Fighter and Tekken reviving their respective big bads, M. Bison and Heihachi.
Even if SNK don’t want to tread on their old lore by making Geese return fully, there’s always the option of including Nightmare Geese, a more zombie-esque version of Geese who has been seen in SNK games in the past as a representation of the enduring presence of Geese within the memories of the people he hurt.
Another option if SNK would rather not delve into Geese himself is to bring in someone related to him — his half-brother, Wolfgang Krauser. Originally a boss character, Krauser mostly appears to try and one-up his brother, but even with Geese gone you can still dive in to similar motivations since Rock Howard is still a central character.
Krauser is a complex character who has a very dark and corrupt side to him but also a high pride in his lineage and status as a nobleman, so you could either go with him wanting to crush Rock just because he reminds him of his hated Geese, or conversely have a redemption arc for Krauser where he tries to redeem their family line through Rock so he doesn’t turn out like Geese did.
There’s a lot of possibilities here and they honestly spring eternal the deeper you dive into the old Fatal Fury cast, but these characters stick out to me as ones that have fame from King of Fighters but also deep story ties to what might be going on currently in the Fatal Fury universe.
Obviously, we can’t talk about Fatal Fury representatives who became bigger in King of Fighters without mentioning Kim Kaphwan, but honestly, I don’t know if he’s really necessary as a playable characters if his sons are present. I think having Kim as a supporting NPC to his kids makes more sense for City of the Wolves.
It’d be easy for SNK to just throw Kyo Kusanagi or Iori Yagami into the game and call it a day if they’re just trying to use brand recognition to boost the game, but honestly, if we’re doing in-company guests I’d rather see something that has more ties with Fatal Fury itself.
There’s reportedly a new Art of Fighting game in the works, so borrowing characters from Art of Fighting might seem like a redundant idea in concept, but hear me out. I’m not asking specifically for Ryo Sakazaki as such — I’m asking for Mr. Karate II.
As invested fans may be aware, Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury both take place in South Town, but they are quite far removed from each other on the timeline with Art of Fighting being over a decade earlier than Fatal Fury (remember what I said about King of Fighters being something of an alternate universe?)
On top of that, Garou: Mark of the Wolves serves as another time jump of a decade or so from the original Fatal Fury games, meaning that Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves sits at least 20 years removed from Art of Fighting on the in-universe timeline.
In Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition, a remake of the first Fatal Fury back on the PlayStation 1, there’s actually an unlockable character named Mr. Karate II who is an older, more mature Ryo Sakazaki donning his father’s old identity from the Art of Fighting games.
This rendition of Ryo at his full potential has always been extremely cool to me and with Fatal Fury coming back to the limelight, I’d love to see SNK throw him into the ring again.
Even if we do see Ryo all the time in King of Fighters and we’re definitely going to see him front and center for the new Art of Fighting, this would be a Ryo in his late 30s or early 40s who has achieved full mastery of Kyokugenryu Karate and that just sounds… way too epic for me to want to miss out on it.
Honestly, this one is more of a “wish” pick than an expected pick for me, but you’d best believe I am wishing for it.
What about you? Any specific wishes, hopes or expectations for the early DLC picks in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves? Let us know in the comments.
