The Fatal Fury series developed by SNK, a fighting game franchise much like Street Fighter had first released in 1991 for the NeoGeo after which it was ported to the SNES. SNK had a steady release for the Fatal Fury games year after year until 1999 after which they had stopped. SNK then announced that they were working on a Fatal Fury game in 2022 and they recently released a trailer with a Summer 2025 release date.
The Beginnings Of Fatal Fury
The Fatal Fury franchise is one of the most well known fighting games from the 90s. SNK had been making a bunch of games even before the start of Fatal Fury but none of them were helping reach the dominance they so desired. So SNK started to work on Fatal Fury after seeing Capcom announcing Street Fighter 2.
The first Fatal Fury quickly garnered high appeal from those who played due to its unique two-plane fighting style. Since the games were essentially still 2D, the mechanic introduced 2 parallel lanes that players could jump to to avoid getting hit. Another thing SNK focused on was adding depth to the characters and an intriguing storyline full of plot twists to keep the player wanting more.
Not Another Generic Plot
Instead of the generic “Save the World” plotline that was going on and still is, Fatal Fury had a much more intimate one. The story starts off with Terry Bogard, who had witnessed his adopted father get killed by Geese Howard at the age of 10.
In the present Gees has risen to become the Kingpin of South Town, a fictional city based on Miami. Terry returns to Southtown as he hears that Geese has set up a tournament to hire henchmen, thus sees this as an opportunity to get revenge. This plotline made the fighting feel much more personal and added depth to Terry’s character.
The Much Awaited Return
SNK had released a trailer around September where they announced that the game would be released on April 24 of next year. The trailer laid out what to expect such as a continuation to the story after the events of the last release which was Garou: Mark of the Wolves. We can expect to see a bunch of returning characters, 17 to be precise and 5 new ones.
There will also be 5 characters unlockable by those who purchase the DLC and Season pass 1, hinting that there are going to be more season passes down the line. The trailer also introduced something called the ‘Rev system’, which looks similar to Tekken’s brake system at first glance.
It would not be Fatal Fury without a dedicated story mode being the main feature that is highlighted, we get access to a pretty big map littered with objectives for us to complete and level up. What is another really cool feature is the fact that we can customize the color of each and every piece of gear our character wears and we can even change the pieces themselves.
An Interesting Choice Of Art Direction
The artstyle they are going for looks like a mix between modern Street Fighter and Tekken, the characters have this pastel cell shade on them but with gradients being added in a sort of subtle manner. Every character has a white outline in every scene from the trailer that helps in distinguishing them from the background.
At the same time, the faces don’t look as detailed or they just have skin akin to characters from the Lego games. Hopefully these will be addressed and fixed by April of next year and we get to see our beloved characters with proper details running on modern hardware.
A Cautious But Hopeful Expectation
It has been 25 years since the last Fatal Fury game, lots of other equally capable games are in the spotlight now such as Tekken, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball Z. They have been carrying the crown of the Fighting game genre for literal decades. It would be interesting to see how fans or those who enjoy fighting games receive this game when it comes out in April of next year.
SNK have the dreaded task of regaining a player base that had waited 25 years for a sequel, however knowing their dedication and resolve they have a good chance of attracting them back and hopefully introducing some new ones to the legendary franchise.
