Fatal Fury kicked off way back in 1991 amid the birth and boom of the fighting game genre, and like its Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter peers, rolled out significant updates and subsequent entries for the better part of the next decade. Then things came to a screeching halt.
SNK produced Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves in late 1999, and though the franchise would remain both remembered and beloved, Mark of the Wolves appeared to be the end. Here, a quarter century later, SNK has announced Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves for 2026, and long time producer Yasuyuki Oda has opened up in a developer interview with GamesIndustry.biz about the 25 year gap.
It was not for lack of desire that the main Fatal Fury franchise took such a long hiatus, as SNK has been busy with other ventures like the closely-tied King of Fighters series.
“I wanted to develop [a new Fatal Fury game] earlier but we got tied up with other projects,” starts Oda to Gameindustry. “However, bringing back Fatal Fury was always in the cards and it was just a matter of finding the right timing.”
“After multiple successful games utilizing other SNK IPs, it was the most natural next choice, as it was always one of the cornerstones of the company. It’s just purely coincidental that it’s been over 25 years since the last release,” he explained.
Another complicating factor naturally occurred as a result of the prolonged stretch between releases as the development team at SNK evolved over over the years. When it came time to actually tackle City of the Wolves, Oda had a mix of new and veteran developers on his team.
Getting younger and fresher minds to work and communicate effectively with older and more established ones is never an easy task, but Oda and the dev team were ultimately successful in connecting the parties and creating an efficient working atmosphere.
“A lot of time was spent bridging that gap,” he continues. “During that process, both sides learned a lot from each other which was a very interesting experience in general,” finished Oda.
Street Fighter’s Ken and Chun-Li were revealed as guest CotW DLC characters
There’s a good bit more to the interview as Oda also discusses a critical difference between Fatal Fury and sister franchise King of Fighters, a bit of the character selection process for City of the Wolves, and ensuring SNK’s next big fighting game is as accessible as possible without making it feel like a casual experience.
Be sure to give the full interview a look through, and let us know in the comments below how excited you are for City of the Wolves to release release on April 24, 2025.