Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

Update: Physical pre-orders for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves are starting to go live at some North American retailers. You can find additional information about that and what’s included in the Special and Deluxe Editions below.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was first fully revealed to the world almost 10 months ago already, and every day brings us closer to finally getting the game in our hands.

SNK announced new details for their physical pre-orders on Fatal Fury and its reasonably-priced Deluxe Edition. We’ll be updating this story once the pre-orders actually go live, but in the meantime, proceed below for all of the information you’ll need.

As was seen in the U.K. store listing, it looks like the rest of North America and Europe will be getting the same Deluxe Edition of City of the Wolves too.

This premium version comes with the Special Edition of Fatal Fury inside a NeoGeo-themed collector’s box, and there’s plenty more in the package.

It also comes with a steelbook with the soundtrack on 2 CDs, an artbook with over 100 pages, double-sided poster, and two sticker sheets.

The Deluxe Edition is up for sale at a cool $80 / €80 price tag.

This version will only be available for the PlayStation 5 in North America and Europe.

Those who don’t need all the extras can pick up the regular physical edition, which is also upgraded to the Special Edition for pre-orders.

As was previously announced, the Special Edition of Fatal Fury comes with the base game and Season Pass 1 code for $60 / €60 featuring Street Fighter’s Ken and Chun-Li plus three more DLC fighters.

Early adopters of any version of City of the Wolves includes a bonus code for Terry Bogard’s Fatal Fury 2 costume as well.

Fatal Fury’s standard physical release will be available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and Xbox Series X.

The PS4 version is confirmed as coming with a free upgrade to the PS5 edition too.

Update: Best Buy is now accepting pre-orders for Fatal Fury’s Special and Deluxe Editions. Amazon, Walmart, GameStop and Target in the United States still do not yet have their pages live yet, but that should be changing very soon.

Those who pre-order a digital copy of City of the Wolves gets a different bonus of three days of early access at April 21 instead of April 24, 2025.

Fatal Fury’s grand return is coming to the PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S and PC via both Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Click images for larger versions

Platforms: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X

Price: $59.99/€59.99

Contents:


• Base Game


• Season Pass 1 (Product Code)

Platforms: PlayStation 5

Price: $79.99/€79.99

Contents:


• Base Game


• Season Pass 1 (Product Code)


• Steelbook case


• 2-disc soundtrack


• 100+-page artbook


• Collector’s box


• 2 sticker sheets

Conan the Barbarian is coming to Mortal Kombat 1 a lot sooner than we realized. NetherRealm Studios debuted the upcoming DLC character’s gameplay trailer this week, along with explaining a lot of what he can do during their Kombat Kast presentation for him, and as you might expect from an NRS guest character, Conan has a ton of references and nods to the films he hails from.

There are many classic Conan moments and lines that could be pulled from for his MK1 version, and the development team behind him has made sure to include one of the best and funniest he has. Yes, Conan has his camel punch (or rather, bonk on the head) in Mortal Kombat 1, and it’s a bit more interesting of a move than just being a singular strike.

To set the stage here, in the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film there is a scene where Conan (portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a little giggly after ingesting a mysterious substance. He and a friend are walking through a city when Conan stumbles and bumps into a camel he didn’t see standing in front of him, and he instinctually turns around and punches the camel in the face effectively knocking it to the ground.

Later, Conan encounters that same camel as he’s riding through the city and as he passes by attempts to apologize to the large animal, but the camel rejects the apology and spits on him instead. In retaliation, Conan rides up and literally bonks the camel straight on the head, once again knocking the camel out.

It’s that second hilarious and outrageous bonk that found its way into Conan’s move list in Mortal Kombat 1, and despite it seeming like it would just be a simple overhead strike or something along those lines, this move is actually far more interesting and potentially powerful.

You see, what I am now deeming the “Camel Bonk” is tied to a counter move that Conan has where he opens his arms in front of his opponent and welcomes an attack. Should his foe strike, Conan will deflect it without even flinching, then proceed to Camel Bonk the unfortunate soul right over the head.

Just like the camel in the film, the opponent will become stunned after this, and this stunned state leaves them completely open and vulnerable to an attack, and more importantly, a full combo. The stun stays in place for a decent amount of time too, giving Conan the ability to charge up one of his chargeable normal attacks or call a slower Kameo Fighter into play to set up something devastating.

Though there might be some scaling on the follow up combo after the counter bonk here, the preview match featured during the Kombat Kast shows Conan hitting upwards of 300 damage from a combo following the counter special move — and that’s without using meter and without Fatal Blow.

You can check out the Camel Bonk in action below, followed by the actual Camel Bonk from the film in the tweet from Rooflemonger below, as well as the movie scenes we discussed above. Be sure to check out Conan’s second Fatality in Mortal Kombat 1 also as it was revealed outside of the Kombat Kast and gameplay trailer yesterday.

Conan the Barbarian is set for release via early access tomorrow, January 21, for Khaos Reigns expansion owners.

The Camel Crusher is confirmed pic.twitter.com/J4EUn9g7Mh

— Rooflemonger (@Rooflemonger) January 16, 2025

Capcom is bringing their second ever guest character into Street Fighter 6 early next month. Mai Shiranui of Fatal Fury and King of Fighters fame is gearing up to join the fight, and the company behind the popular fighting title continues to release more details and content related to her leading up to her official release.

Following last week’s gameplay trailer, this week Capcom has shared Mai’s full Street Fighter 6 theme song.

Alongside the almost four minute song (which you can find below), Street Fighter 6’s director Takayuki Nakayama shared some quick words about what exactly we’re hearing here. Apparently, this character theme was composed by the same artist who made Chun-Li’s theme in Street Fighter 6.

“The theme music for Mai was composed (Arrangement) by Kitagawa-san, the composer who created the theme music for SF6 Chun-Li,” wrote Nakayama about the new track. “I have known him for over 10 years and he does a wonderful job I hope you enjoy it”

Mai’s theme, entitled Enryuujin SF6 Arrange, is an upbeat track with some funky bass lines leading the way. There are also flavors of her place of origin throughout, with what sounds like a shamisen (traditional Japanese guitar) periodically jumping in for a few quick riffs.

The overall vibe and tempo of this song feels light and swift, which matches Mai’s fighting style quite well.

Take a listen to Mai’s full Street Fighter 6 theme below and let us know what you think about it in the comments.

The theme music for Mai was composed (Arrangement) by Kitagawa-san, the composer who created the theme music for SF6 Chun-Li. I have known him for over 10 years and he does a wonderful job I hope you enjoy it https://t.co/ecroG3gsOV

— TAKA-nakayama (@takaNakayama) January 20, 2025

Mai is joining the Street Fighter 6 roster as a playable character on February 5.

After months of waiting, the time for the first DLC characters to arrive in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero (for Season Pass holders at least).

Bandai Namco just dropped the official patch notes for Sparking Zero’s Version 2008.007.003.005.004 update that’ll bring access to 11 new fighters as well as a new mode and balance changes.

As was previously confirmed in last week’s Hero of Justice Pack trailer, Gohan and Piccolo are the stars of the show with the DLC including their Beast and Orange transformations though they aren’t coming alone.

Gamma 1, Gamma 2 and Cell Max are also joining the roster as Sparking Zero’s first set of DLC characters all centered around the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero movie.

To get them first, however, players will need to wait for the new update to go live.

According to the official post, Bamco is putting Sparking Zero into server maintenance today, January 20, starting at 2 p.m. PST.

The downtime is scheduled to last for around one hour, and all online features will presumably remain unavailable during that time.

Said patch also comes with a new Legendary Warrior Face-Off mode featuring limited-time fights against extra strong opponents.

There may not be character-specific balance changes being made in this update, however, they are changing up a lot of the attacks and skills overall.

We’re going to see 10 different attack styles and general moves be adjusted along with 5 skills, so we could see this shake up the meta in some capacity.

Those who do not have the Season Pass can still take part in all the new update benefits, but will have to wait until January 23 if they wish to pick up some of the DLC characters by themselves.

You can check out the new patch notes below or on the official Bandai Namco website.

TheSeventhForce recently released an interesting video that highlighted how certain classic fighting game moves have made appearances outside of its genre. During the video, TheSeventhForce enacts a rule that he can’t refer to a game that is technically a spinoff of a fighting game, such as the references to Street Fighter that can be found in Cannon Spike.

In Mega Man X, the player can actually gain access to Ryu’s Hadoken from the Street Fighter series. Doing this essentially requires the player to be a 100% achiever, but the reward is well worth it considering that the attack has the ability to instantly defeat most enemies, including most bosses.

Similar to unlocking Street Fighter’s most iconic fireball, it’s also possible to unlock Ken’s dragon punch technique in Mega Man X2. Both the Hadoken and Shoryuken are performed with their respective inputs from the Street Fighter series in the Mega Man X games.

In Kirby’s Return to Dream Land, the Fighter Kirby form is filled with references to fighting game techniques. Once this form is unlocked by inhaling Knuckle Joe, Kirby is effectively equipped with the hurricane kick, Hadoken, Flash Kick, and the dragon punch.

Funnily enough, some games enable Kirby to unlock his Smash Hat (usually by consuming Master Hand himself). With this hat, Kirby actually gains access to his moveset from the Super Smash Bros. series.

Throughout the video, TheSeventhForce brings up how Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Sonic the Hedgehog, the Tales Of series, Disney’s Magical Mirror, Breath of Fire, Castlevania, Scott Pilgrim, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge do similar things.

Check it all out in the video below:

Confusion about him leaving Bandai Namco is because of an option he’s enabled on LinkedIn

It’s been less than a week since the Tekken 8 ver.1.11.00 patch dropped, but Tekken Project Executive Game Director, Katsuhiro Harada, said the feedback from the community is very positive so far.

Also, he noted that even if you don’t get a direct reply about any feedback you’ve left for the game, don’t worry, because the Tekken team at Bandai Namco is logging this information.

Patch 1.11 has been very well received, thank you.
We are continuing to check your feedback, and as I always say, even if you don’t get a direct reply, don’t worry, the staff are recording it.

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) January 20, 2025

The latest patch added some new features for players ahead of the upcoming Tekken 8 Season 2 update, as well as a handful of character balance changes.

Also, a few outlets had started worrying that the legendary fighting game developer may be leaving Bandai Namco because of an update to his LinkedIn page, but Harada clarified he’s only enabled an option that makes it look like he’s looking for new work because it allows him to speak with more people on that platform.

“Oh, don’t worry about this,” wrote Harada. “I meet a lot of people on a regular basis (but I don’t actually have that many friends in my private world *laughs*), I just want to meet more people and expand my horizons in the future.

“I can talk to a lot of people when I turn this option on. Just that,” Harada wrote on X.

Oh, don’t worry about this.
I meet a lot of people on a regular basis (but I don’t actually have that many friends in my private world LOL), I just want to meet more people and expand my horizons in the future.
I can talk to a lot of people when I turn this option on.
Just that. https://t.co/OpcfAZjxuS

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) January 20, 2025

Takayuki Nakayama, Director of Street Fighter 6, recently revealed some interesting Street Fighter lore over on Twitter. It turns out that a certain character that could’ve been thought of as being deceased is actually still alive.

During Akuma’s prologue story in Street Fighter 5, he ends up crossing paths with Gen, Necalli, and Ryu. He ends up defeating all three of them, but his fight with Gen is only shown through still images. Through coughing and wheezing, Gen taunts Akuma on what he lost when he abandoned his humanity.

Unimpressed by his words, Akuma moved in to strike against the weakened Gen. Though Akuma has been known to spare Gen from previous encounters, this time felt a little different.

“Your weakness has never been more clear,” proclaimed Akuma to Gen in response. “A useless speech meant to prolong the inevitable… accept your fate and go to Hell! Messatsu!”

Following this, Akuma is then seen standing over a lifeless Gen. Of course, Gen’s fate was always looking rather grim considering his crippling illness.

Despite all of this, Nakayama has confirmed that Gen is “still active” around the time of Street Fighter 6 in response to a question about the character. Considering that Street Fighter 6 takes place after Street Fighter 3, this shows that Gen has an incredible amount of resilence.

Of course, it’s certainly worth mentioning that it’s actually extremely rare for a character to actually become permanently deceased in the Street Fighter franchise. Some of the most notable examples of this actually happening are Dan’s father, Chun-Li’s father, and Goutetsu — at least thus far.

At one point, Gouken, the master of Ryu and Ken, was believed to have been felled by Akuma, but the confrontation actually just put him in a coma for a few years. He ended up making a surprising return in Street Fighter 4 due to the popularity of the “Sheng Long” rumor from the Street Fighter 2 days.

It was also stressed multiple times that M. Bison was killed by Ryu at the end of Street Fighter 5’s main story mode, A Shadow Falls. In hindsight, it comes across as somewhat of a joke considering that M. Bison has returned as a DLC challenger in Season 2 of Street Fighter 6, though the experience has left him with amnesia.

Unfortunately, Nakayama did not provide too many details about Gen’s whereabouts or activities. Ultimately, he only stated that he’s “still active” and wouldn’t be interested in participating in any sort of ball games.

Perhaps we’ll actually see Gen returning in Street Fighter 6 either as an NPC or a future DLC fighter. The fact that Nakayama has the character on his mind is certainly interesting in this regard.

Gen is still active. He wouldn’t be interested in ball games.

— TAKA-nakayama (@takaNakayama) January 15, 2025

During the Tokyo eSports Festa 2025, Koei Tecmo participated in a lecture where they stated that they remove between 2,000 to 3,000 pieces of fan art, annually, that they deem inappropriate.

Specifically addressing doujinshi (self-published works like manga, magazines or other print mediums), Koei Tecmo’s Tomotoshi Nishimura, who’s the general manager of their legal affairs department, discussed how they handle fan creations in relation to their Dead or Alive Intellectual Property (IP).

Nishimura said outright that Koei Tecmo has no issue with users making derivative works based on their intellectual properties, and they will openly support this otaku culture, as they’ve even sponsored events where people sell creations based on their IPs.

However, if artists create derivative works for games that are not out yet, or alter their characters for “adult purposes,” that may be when Koei Tecmo steps in to issue a take down notice.

Nishimura said that his company’s creators view their characters “like daughters,” which is why they’re forced to take action in such cases.

He added that they’ve taken down about 200-300 doujinshi based on the Dead or Alive franchise.

With a property as large as Dead or Alive, spanning 17 games and running for nearly 30 years, 200-300 take downs isn’t a considerably high number, nor even is 2,000 to 3,000 images annually.

As such, it seems like Koei Tecmo gives the community quite a bit of leeway when it comes to producing artwork and other material based on their IPs, only stepping in when they deem things have gone too far.

Given the the Core Values situation that happened at Evo Japan 2019 and the fact that the Dead or Alive series is well known for its sex appeal, it makes sense the Koei Tecmo gives the community similar standards that they have in their games, even if the statement about the characters being their daughters is a bit hard to process.

With Koei Tecmo being quite a bit more active these days regarding the Dead or Alive franchise, it’ll be interesting to see if a 7th game is announced in the future as part of its 30 year anniversary.

From GameWatch via Automaton-Media.

If you’re not following the great Goh_Billy on Twitter, you should. This massive fighting game fan very frequently chronicles and shares various aspects of classic fighting titles and presents them in interesting and creative ways for the whole community to enjoy.

With Billy’s main focus being on old school fighting game sprites, we often get to see isolated special move effects, characters, and special sprites while not having to be in the midst of a fight to do so. Billy’s latest works isolate and share sprites from the Darkstalkers series, and this time we get to see what each fighter looks like when they’re struck with an electricity-based attack.

Late last year, Goh_Billy shared an image that featured all of Street Fighter 3: Third Strike’s shocked character sprites, and even here in this day and age these stills are beautifully expressive. From the movement you can see within each one even when not animated to interesting little quirks like Q’s skeleton not being shown, these Third Strike sprites were an absolute joy to see.

Now we get to see the shocked character sprites for another game series that’s animation and style is easily on par with Third Strike’s, if not, better than. The same goes for just how beautifully expressive these monsters are when they’re electrocuted.

There are 20 sprites that Billy has collected here that feature all of the characters you know from each of the classic Darkstalkers games. Some are easy to identify, such as Sasquatch with his giant mouth and wide body, while others might be a little tougher to decipher.

That being said, just like the Third Strike sprites there are some really interesting little nuances to be spotted among these slick images. For example, Darkstalkers’ resident mummy Anakaris appears as a thin, mummified bodied when he’s shocked, and what looks to be Huitzil can be seen with a glowing power core in his chest.

Check out these awesome Darkstalkers shocked character sprites below, and let us know in the comments which is your favorite.

Click images for larger versions

Here are the shocked sprites of the Darkstalkers. pic.twitter.com/WtEIbpWDBA

— Goh_Billy (@GohBilly1) January 16, 2025

Look to the past for answers on the future

One thing we’ve heard over and over again for many months is that fans of Street Fighter 6 want Capcom to take their money in exchange for new costumes for their characters.

Given how important DLC sales are to a game’s overall performance and how well costumes have done traditionally in the prior two Street Fighter games, this situation is mind boggling from the outside looking in. However, there are likely a couple of very big reasons why we haven’t seen outfit 4 for most of the cast.

Please take a good long look at Birdie’s outfit here from Street Fighter 5, and note how much clipping is happening with his hair, chain and hand.

This was a notorious problem in the prior game, especially when characters loaded up on the 2nd player side on the character select screen, and one that’s generally much less of an issue in Street Fighter 6.

While you can find instances of clipping and problematic visuals in Street Fighter 6, the current game has a much higher level of polish and presentation than its predecessor. This level of quality and attention to detail takes time.

I’m sure numerous fans would argue that it’s better to push out an inferior quality product and generate the cash for it, Street Fighter 6’s developers have been very diligent about not repeating mistakes from the recent past, and have generally delivered on doing so.

4K resolution displays are much more common across PCs and consoles than they were in the prior game, and putting together costumes that not only look good at 1080p, but 4K as well, take additional time and resources to develop, especially if you plan on releasing them for all of the game’s 24 cast members (soon to be 25 with Mai in February).

Considering we know that it took about two months to make A.K.I.’s clothes in Street Fighter 6, there’s some simple math we can do here. Two months multiplied by the 24 cast members is four years… ouch.

Outfit 3 was released over a year ago for the base cast, so by this logic, about 1/4th (six) of the costumes should be ready to go at this time.

While I’m sure Capcom would love to release them all in one go, there’s a really simple solution they can put in place with Mai Shiranui’s release date on February 5, 2025.

It wasn’t that long ago, in the Street Fighter 4 and 5 days where Capcom would release costumes for specific characters at one time, or in a themed package like for the Capcom Pro Tour.

While it’s been pretty awesome to get updated costumes for most of the cast in Street Fighter 6 all at once, it’s not like the approach in the previous games was highly detrimental from a sales perspective.

There are always going to be complaints from users that they aren’t getting enough costumes or they hate the ones available. That has been happening since alternative costumes were announced for Street Fighter 4.

The thing is… the previous model has worked so well, of releasing costumes in smaller batches, the solution seems pretty obvious here.

Since fans have waited for over a year, release as many outfits as you have available right now with Mai. Then, in the future, release them about every 4-6 months with as many as you have ready.

The Fighting Game Community loves to dress up their characters, and I find it hard to believe Capcom doesn’t have at least a handful of these costumes ready to go for some cast members.

Some is better than none. Push out what you have, let the player base pay you a bunch of money to access these cosmetic improvements, and use that money to produce more costumes in a timely fashion. To quote The Office, it’s a win-win-win scenario.

Capcom recently said that they were surprised by the data they’ve received showing them to be very popular thus far, so it’s clear these alternative costumes are still selling well in Street Fighter 6.

Use these resources to make the game better and get more costumes created for the entire cast. It shouldn’t be this difficult to access more cosmetic options that the community has literally been begging for, for months.

Let us dress up the characters we love more, please Capcom, it shouldn’t be this difficult.