Back at EVO 2022, SNK announced that a new Fatal Fury/Garou game is coming, but the popular fighting game developer did not provide many details.
At Gamescom 2022 Twinfinite sat down with chief producer Yasuyuki Oda and associate producer Joshua Weatherford, and we tried to glean as much information as possible about the game.
First of all, development has already started. This isn’t a case in which the game has just been greenlit on paper.
That being said, the new Fatal Fury is a “very big release” for SNK, so it’ll be “a little while” before we see more. The developers want to make sure it’s perfect before prime time.
Oda-san mentioned that when he returned to SNK in 2014 (After a long stint at Dimps), one of the first things he said to then president Eikichi Kawasaki was “please let me make a new Garou game.” It took a while for the stars to align, but ever since then bringing the series back has been one of his goals.
We also learn that while there will still be a focus on online play and VS fighting, the new Fatal Fury will also have more of a focus on the single-player mode compared to SNK’s recent releases.
This shouldn’t surprise those who know the series, as the Fatal Fury series has an extremely complex story, so it’s not surprising that the new one may feature an extensive story mode as well.
Speaking of the story, Oda-san acknowledged that the large time gap from the latest Fatal Fury release and today creates a challenge because many of today’s players aren’t aware of what happened in previous entries. The team is definitely thinking about this and they have a few plans to overcome it.
Asked whether SNK will bring back the old Fatal Fury cast or enact some sort of generational leap, Oda-san did not directly respond, but he did mention that Terry Bogard is definitely in the game.
At the moment, the new Fatal Fury doesn’t have a release window or announced platforms. We’ll have to wait and see what SNK announces on that front down the line.
Of course, you should stay tuned for the full interview, which will include plenty more insight on The King of Fighters XV and fighting game development in general.
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