When a classic piece of media is revisited, there is always pressure to deliver a product that lives up to a legacy. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves faces that dilemma with a team that wants to ensure it can add to Rock Howard’s story over 20 years later.
More than 24 years after the original Garou: Mark of the Wolves released and essentially ended the Fatal Fury franchise, SNK is returning to the city where the mighty rule and legends never die. But it isn’t all fun when a team gets together to craft a sequel to one of the most beloved fighting games of all time, and for some of the developers, the pressure to deliver a quality title is daunting.
While attending the SNK World Championship 2023, I was able to speak with City of the Wolves director Hayato Konya and producer Yasuyuki Oda about returning to Fatal Fury after so long and what it means to have a team comprised of newcomers and some original Garou developers. Konya-san has worked as a designer on other SNK projects such as SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, but is stepping into the director chair for CotW while Oda-san, who worked as a designer on MorW, continues his recent role as producer on another fighter—which leads to even more pressure for the team.
“It makes me very nervous. There’s a lot of pressure on me to deliver,” director Hayato Konya said to Dot Esports. “Other people are still playing this game competitively even 20 years later. I’ve got the actual creator from 20 years ago also on me [to deliver.] So it’s just a lot of pressure on me.”
But working on a beloved project’s sequel with some of the original team isn’t just about living up to the pressure; it also provides a sense of guidance for those who might not be as experienced with what makes Fatal Fury different from King of Fighters, which we touched on in our CotW hands-on preview.
Konya-san specifically points out that having Oda-san and others around helps them truly identify the “DNA of the series,” especially early on when they were developing CotW’s systems. Not only does the new REV Meter help evolve previous concepts from MotW, but that mix of expertise let the team dig beyond the original game to shape even more systems into a modern formula that makes CotW feel similar yet distinct from its predecessor and the King of Fighters series.
“We did want to make it feel distinct from KoF, so that’s why there is a heavier hit stop and stuff to make it feel a bit heavier as a game,” Konya said. “We thought about the game very logically and balanced the aggressive offense with defensive tactics, for example, by adding Hyper Defense as a sort of counter to Braking. There is a tactical element binding all of the systems where on option might seem strong but another system plays well against it.”
On top of systems, CotW will focus on character stories and try to provide conclusions that were not settled in previous games, which was a big reason SNK and Oda-san wanted to pursue this project originally. This will all be done while still working to welcome new players into the fold as a near 25-year-old game finally gets its next chapter.
“There’s a clear break between the original Mark of the Wolves and the old Fatal Fury series, and the focus will be on Garou because they’re the same characters but a bit older without much of a timeskip,” Konya said. “For legacy content and references, that is where we pull from, but at the same time we want somebody who’s never seen these characters before to see them and go ‘Wow that guy is cool or that girl is a really amazing character.’ We put a lot of effort into making a strong first impression.”
As for the story offerings, SNK isn’t ready to share more info yet, but Oda-san confirmed there will be more dialogue in CotW than the previous game.
Now we have to play a waiting game as SNK brings demo builds of City of the Wolves to upcoming events like Evo Japan in April, where we could hear more about additional characters, features, and content leading into the early 2025 release window.
