Fans waited a long time to see SNK win a fighting game of the year award at Geoff Keighley’s show, only for it to immediately disappoint them at the start of a new year. The company promoted the upcoming season of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves with a new trailer, which involves Gen AI.
The fighting game genre has been growing bigger with every year, as some of the big series from yesteryear are making a comeback with new entries. We have seen some of the big shots like Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, and Tekken come to the limelight in the last decade.
But the one fighting game developer that everyone constantly wished for to make a huge comeback was SNK. The Company went through some tough phases and almost completely disappeared for some decades, only working on pachinko machines.
The history of SNK and Fatal Fury series
The release of King of Fighters XIV in 2016 raised a lot of eyebrows, signalling that the developers were back to make home console releases of their popular IPs. 2025 marked the release and return of one of their first big fighting game franchises, Fatal Fury.
This is a title that shares history with the original Street Fighter by Capcom. Because some of the people behind the game went to SNK to work on the original Fatal Fury. Unfortunautely SNK games have never found popularity in North America, where Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat dominated.
Fans were not happy in 2022 because WarnerBros’ MultiVersus was given the fighting game of the year award, instead of SNK’s King of Fighters XV. So this new entry in the franchise is very dear to a lot of fans, especially because it won the fighting game of the year award.
Things were looking great for the developer as they were keeping a more frequent release for seasonal updates compared to other major fighting games, which got them a lot of praise. The year even started with SNK teasing a collaboration with the iconic anime, Fist of the Northstar.
SNK has always been under fire their weird descisions
It all fell apart when the official social media outlets dropped a trailer promoting the next season, and its characters with generative AI assets. Fans on social media took no mercy and ripped the post apart with posts of disappointment.
Although, this was not the first time Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves came under the scrutiny of mixed reactions. The game in it’s first season made some odd collaborative choices, including the world famous footballer, Ronaldo, as a playable character in the game.
The community was not happy about the fact their favorite franchise and company was associating with someone with a controversial past, involving alleged sexual misconduct. The reactions back then were of around the same nature, but more mixed because of the football fandom.
This time around, it seems like everyone has lost their patience with the SNK marketing team’s charades, or for that matter whoever was involved in deciding on generative AI assets for the trailer.
