Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a long-overdue revival, one that brings the series back from the dead after 26 years as a genuine love letter to the genre. It’s an old-school fighting game through and through, something FGC oldheads have been yearning for.
A lot of innovations and streamlining have been done to make modern fighting games easier than they were back in the day. Comeback mechanics, armored moves, ways to skip neutral, new control schemes that provide a lower barrier of execution: A lot has changed to make the famously difficult genre more approachable.
Meanwhile, City of the Wolves has very few neutral skip mechanics, very strict timing windows on combos, difficult motion inputs that require a higher level of precision than most other modern fighting games and a huge focus on defense mechanics. It is a fighting game for fighting game fans.
We spoke with CotW’s Chief Producer, Yasuyuki Oda, to discover why they decided to stick to SNK’s hardcore roots and didn’t give in to creating an easily accessible fighting game despite that being the trend in the industry.
City of the Wolves is hardcore (to a fault)
Fighting games have almost never had the sort of marketing push behind them that we’ve seen with CotW. Taking over Wrestlemania, internet stars like IShowSpeed and KSI playing it in London Square and even putting Cristiano Ronaldo in the game: The marketing here has some real motion behind it.
Combined with a $2.5 million dollar tournament coming later in 2025 and a million up for grabs at the Esports World Cup, it’s clear that there’s been plenty of cheddar spent marketing Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
And yet, the player counts reveal it’s still a pretty niche product.
Steam player counts by no means indicate whether or not a game has succeeded or failed, especially considering how popular fighting games are on console. But, considering that Street Fighter 6’s all-time high on the platform is around 70k, Fatal Fury definitely hasn’t made the same splash. And, in some ways, that’s by design.
City of the Wolves was created to give players a much bigger defensive suite, one that’s inherently harder to access than most other fighting games, but also infinitely more rewarding to pull off once you master it.
“We made a conscious effort to increase points of interaction, give the player more control and give them more ‘chances’ to change the outcome of the match. We made offense a lot stronger, as well. Between offense and defense, I would say that the offensive side is very strong now, but players who can defend well are appropriately rewarded,” Oda explained.
“I believe we’ve been able to recreate the edge that Mark of the Wolves had with the new REV System, while also matching the needs of modern fighting games.”
SNKFatal Fury City of the Wolves requires a high level of precision to play – perhaps too high for the average fighting game player
Outside of the REV gauge with Street Fighter-like EX moves and the S.P.G. system, a short-lived boost to damage that gives you additional options, this game is almost completely devoid of modern conventions and comeback mechanics. There is no way to skip over learning the fundamentals and every character’s unique quirks, even if you opt to use Smart controls.
The so-called “Smart Style” is a set of training wheels at best. You have to learn motion inputs to play at even a basic level. SF6’s Modern control scheme it is not. SNK wanted classic motion inputs to be a core part of the experience.
“Personally, I feel like these new input methods have not fully established themselves in fighting games yet. I think, over time, more and more games will distance themselves from motion inputs, but I don’t think the time is right for City of the Wolves to do so quite yet,” he explained.
“Also, this title is a sequel to MARK OF THE WOLVES and we wanted to give players who have been playing since then the ability to play with the motion inputs they have become accustomed to. For these reasons, we decided to leave in motion inputs as an option.”
It’s hard not to applaud SNK for sticking with their roots and making a difficult fighting game, one that lacks many of the frills and luxuries of other modern takes on the genre that are dominating the market. They were less focused on making a game that was popular and more focused on creating a game that, at least in terms of core mechanics, is loyal to what they’ve been doing for decades.
SNKEven with big marketing behind it like putting Ronaldo in the game, CotW has debuted as a relatively niche product
While I have respect for their approach, it’s also fair to have doubts that, no matter how much money and advertising they throw at Fatal Fury City of the Wolves, that it may never have the mainstream appeal of their competitors.
It remains to be seen if CotW can have a lasting cultural impact and win players over in the coming years, or if it’s fated to become another niche fighting game with a small yet passionate community keeping it alive.
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