‘Fatal Fury’ Is the Sister Series to ‘Street Fighter’ You May Not Know

The fighting game scene may be thriving today, but when the origins of the genre were much more humble. After Yie Air Kung Fu (1984) and International Karate (1985) introduced the idea of one-on-one martial arts battles, Capcom threw its hat into the digital ring in 1987 with Street Fighter, where a scrappy young fighter named Ryu took on all comers. The game itself might’ve been somewhat underwhelming, but Capcom was far from done. The foundation for the future of gaming was there.

When it arrived in March of 1991, Street Fighter II cemented the idea of the fighting game as we know it today. Eight distinct characters, each with their own unique fighting style, created a type of competition like players had never seen. Before long, coins lined the bottom of the arcade machine panels everywhere, while people of all ages waited for their shot at the title while huddled around the screen watching the action unfold. 

Along with Street Fighter‘s success came competitors, as other companies rushed to corner their share of the fighting game market. American developer Midway developed Mortal Kombat (1992), which ushered in its own ultra-violent variant on the genre featuring beheadings and buckets of blood. However, right in Capcom’s backyard of Osaka, an outfit calling itself Shin Nihon Kikaku, or SNK, was cultivating a Street Fighter rival of its own, bringing with them a secret weapon — a founding father from the original Street Fighter‘s development team —  to do it. 

Fatal Fury was developed around the same time as the legendary Street Fighter II, arriving in arcades just as the fighting game scene was exploding. Where Capcom’s game follows a group of eight world-traveling fighters battling a wannabe dictator, Fatal Fury is the story of a red-hat-wearing blond warrior and his pals rough-and-tumbling through the streets of a fictional American city called South Town. The first Fatal Fury hits arcades mere months after Street Fighter II, and planted the seeds for a new branch of fighting game history. 

And while Street Fighter would rapidly permeate into mainstream consciousness, even roping in Jean-Claude Van-Damme for its 1994 feature film adaptation, Fatal Fury’s fate was less an instant success than a slow burn. Although the game looked and played much like Street Fighter, it never quite took off in pop culture the way Capcom’s mega hit did. Even after multiple sequels and a massively successful spin-off, Fatal Fury eventually took a step back for nearly three decades. Despite this, its loyal fan base continued to grow, waiting for the day that the original SNK fighting game — which, to some, was a true successor to the roots of Street Fighter — would return.

Now, 26 years after the last game in the franchise, SNK has brought Fatal Fury back with City of the Wolves to welcome back the fighting game faithful who helped carve its path — one that ran parallel to the greats in the genre for so long.

Here’s how Fatal Fury became a key part of the fighting game fraternity, and why, if you aren’t yet, you should finally be paying attention.

The arcade days

Fatal Fury began with two game designers — Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto — who joined SNK after helping to create the very first Street Fighter game at Capcom. Matsumoto went on to develop another SNK stalwart in Art of Fighting, while Nishiyama was put in charge of the progenitor series. 

Because of their shared lineage, the gameplay styles between Fatal Fury and Street Fighter II are remarkably similar. Both are 2D fighting games, using specific directional inputs and attack buttons to perform signature moves, and featuring a selection of strategically-unique characters with their own movesets and attributes. If you’ve ever played a Street Fighter game, you’d likely be able to pick up and play Fatal Fury without too much trouble. Outside of a few minor mechanical differences, anyone who knows well enough how to perform a Hadouken or Shoryuken will feel right at home.

There are a few differing elements that might explain why hardcore fighting game fans flocked to SNK’s fighter. The “lane system” introduced two fighting planes, one in the foreground and one in the background, that players and CPU-controlled opponents could alternate between at will. There are also some moves that require what fans lovingly refer to as “pretzel motions,” or more complex directional inputs that may make a casual fighting fan’s eyes cross.

The first Fatal Fury game offered only three playable characters: Terry and Andy Bogard, two adoptive brothers out for revenge against the man that killed their father, and their best friend Joe Higashi. The killer, crime boss Geese Howard, organizes a tournament called King of Fighters — a name that later be used for SNK’s most popular fighting game series — which the trio enter and ultimately win.

Very quickly, Terry was established as Fatal Fury‘s de facto mascot. His sympathetic story, coupled with his instantly recognizable look complete with red trucker hat (reading, of course, “Fatal Fury”), endeared him to many players looking for an alternative to the world warriors of Street Fighter. He’s since appeared in countless cameos, from playable turns in Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) to most recently in Street Fighter 6 (2023), as the first ever guest character in Capcom’s flagship fighter.

One year later, 1992’s Fatal Fury 2 dropped into arcades with a fresh story, a new villain, and a more robust roster — including another fan-favorite character in the kunoichi (or “female ninja”) Mai Shiranui. After that came Fatal Fury Special in 1993, which not only increased the playable roster to 15 characters, but served as an inflection point for a new era in SNK fighting games. 

A new king of fighters

Hidden in Fatal Fury Special was Ryo Sakazaki, the main protagonist from Fatal Fury’s sister series Art of Fighting (who bears a passing similarity to Street Fighter’s Ryu). The decision to make Ryo a hidden challenger (and playable in the home versions) was so popular, SNK decided to create an Avengers-style crossover, and The King Of Fighters ’94 arrived in August of that year. 

The King of Fighters ’94 stood out among the other fighting games at the time thanks to its team-based structure; instead of choosing single characters, players would choose between teams of three fighters. Terry, Andy, and Joe represented Fatal Fury, Ryo, Robert Garcia, and Takuma Sakazaki represented Art of Fighting, while other teams represented SNK games like Psycho Soldier and Ikari Warriors. 

This roster mash-up set the tone not just for SNK, but for their main competition as well. Capcom recognized the appeal of matching their best fighters against top faces from other brands, and before long the Vs. Series was born through X-Men vs. Street Fighter — which eventually led to Marvel vs. Capcom. 

The two companies even came together for two Capcom vs. SNK titles developed by Capcom, as well as SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos (2003) developed by SNK. These games are especially cheeky in hindsight, as it’s the first time Dan Hibiki — a joke character created by Capcom to mock Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia from SNK’s Art of Fighting — faced off against one of his inspirations.

Despite the risk of cannibalizing itself through its characters’ inclusion in King of Fighters, SNK pressed on with Fatal Fury, releasing two games in 1995 — Fatal Fury 3 and Real Bout Fatal Fury — followed by Real Bout Fatal Fury Special in 1997, Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 in 1998, and finally Garou: Mark Of The Wolves in 1999. 

These later games added new fan-favorite characters like Rock Howard (son of original antagonist Geese Howard) and Blue Mary, but fan and critic reactions to these Fatal Fury entries were mixed compared to what SNK was doing with King of Fighters. As such, the Fatal Fury franchise was resigned to dormancy, forced to watch from the sidelines as The King of Fighters carried the SNK banner for nearly three decades. 

Fatal Fury‘s legacy

The ultimate legacy of the Fatal Fury games is undeniable, though at first glance, it may not be entirely obvious. The creation of The King of Fighters, and crossover fighting games in general, can be attributed to the decision to include Art of Fighting‘s Ryo in Fatal Fury 2. Names like Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui — both of whom have since crossed over into rival fighter Street Fighter 6 — were built in those early Nineties arcades, but a character like Kyo Kusanagi, who debuted in The King of Fighters ’94, would not exist without SNK’s flagship fighting game. 

Terry also became one of 11 downloadable extra fighters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a list that also includes Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, Steve from Minecraft, and Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Smash Bros. lead Masahiro Sakurai dedicated an entire 48-minute video not only to introducing Terry to Smash, but also introducing the history of SNK fighting games to the Nintendo’s audience.

A discussion of both Fatal Fury and its developer SNK also would not be complete without mentioning the Neo Geo, SNK’s home console for the majority of the Nineties. Fighting games thrived on the Neo Geo, beginning with Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting and continuing through multiple King of Fighters entries. 

Now, after a long time away, Fatal Fury is poised to add a new chapter to that legacy in City of the Wolves. 

REV-ving up for a new audience

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is the franchise’s grand return, and the team behind it knows they have a golden opportunity to re-establish what made it so popular in the first place. That begins with strong gameplay, led by producer Yasuyuki Oda — who worked on Fatal Fury from 1993 to 2000, before leaving for Capcom to redefine the genre with the immensely popular Street Fighter IV (2008), and is now back at SNK.

A storied developer with multiple franchise revivals under his belt, Oda knows better than most that the key to resurrecting a latent franchise is to create new systems that will make the games more accessible to the uninitiated. In City of the Wolves, that starts with the REV System.

“The biggest unique point this time is our battle system, the REV System,” Oda tells Rolling Stone via translator. “It was designed so that you can jump in and really make very cool, very flashy combos easily.” That visual appeal was very important to the team, so much so that the effects for one mechanic, REV Excel, were patented by SNK for exclusive use. 

Unlike the days of the arcade, however, a high degree of difficulty might dissuade some modern players from jumping into a new fighting game, but the dev team has that covered through Smart Style controls, a simplified control scheme that allows new players to pull off otherwise complicated moves. Lowering the barrier of entry, for the team, is crucial. 

While they have been the topic of controversy among the fighting game faithful, other franchises have employed similar mechanics: Street Fighter 6, for example, has Modern Controls, which reduce the inputs needed for special moves. Some say it makes fighting games too simple, while others agree new players need a starting point, as long as there are systems in place to build skill and, eventually, move on to traditional control schemes. 

“Overall, we definitely want people to be able to jump in and have fun right at the beginning,” Oda explains, “so that’s why we put stuff in there like REV Excel, where it’s similar to other games but it definitely has its own unique flavor to it.”

One driving factor for the desire to bring in a new generation of players is living up to the legacy of the previous game, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which is still considered to be in the upper echelon of fighting games decades after its original launch. “We want this game to be similar in that, 30 years into the future, people are still playing it,” Oda says. “Our systems may seem complicated at first, but the more you play, the more you’ll be able to unlock your abilities.”

A globally connected city

If there’s one major change in the gaming landscape between 1999 and now that a new Fatal Fury could capitalize on the most, it’s the advent of online gaming. Fighting games and online play have had a sticky relationship in the past, thanks to the use of a delay-based netcode — a system that delays a players’ inputs locally to accommodate the lag of their competitor’s online. 

Delay-based netcode performed decently enough in the mid- to late-2000s, but eventually as consoles became more advanced, it simply could not keep up. Today, it’s a dirty word and a red flag for hardcore fans to see as part of any newly released game.

Then came the creation of rollback netcode, a system that “rolls back” frames to counter latency in connections rather than delaying them — creating a much smoother and more reliable connection like that found playing together in person. What followed was an online fighting game renaissance with games like Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1, and Tekken 8 all adopting rollback. SNK even went so far as to update older fighting games with the new netcode format in test cases for its later projects. City of the Wolves is the result of those tests, and the team is excited to see how it all plays out. 

“Online obviously wasn’t a thing back then [in 1999],” Oda says. “People like me with a Dreamcast could maybe play a little bit, but back in those days, on a 56k modem, you’re not going to be able to play anyone that’s not on your block in a fighting game. We’re always trying to improve all of our games, and online is one thing we want to make sure we get right.”

That connected format has allowed communities to spring up all around the world, and when those communities come together, the magic of fighting games really comes through. “Having global events is a really big thing; I know it’s a different game, but seeing [esports player] Arslan Ash and the Pakistani community come out in Tekken and rock it — and we’ve seen it in King of Fighters, where there was at least one tournament that featured players from Morocco,” Oda says. “Seeing these kinds of communities pop up is really exciting. ”

The legacy of Fatal Fury has been felt since it first stepped up to Street Fighter II in 1991. It helped usher in the age of crossover fighting games and, eventually, the basic concept of guest characters in general. Its own famous names have ventured out of South Town themselves, leaving an indelible mark on other top fighters. SNK’s first foray into fighting games has made its mark on one of the most enduring genres in the industry. After a long 26 years, that legacy finally has a new story to tell. 

Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC.