By Jatin Gundara

The old CRT monitor on my Dad’s Neo-Geo arcade machine burned to life in a flash, as bold, pixelated letters were plastered on the screen: 

FATAL FURY: KING OF FIGHTERS

Before reviewing SNK’s most recent fighting game offering, I felt it appropriate to return to where the beloved series got its start: 1994’s Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters. So there I was, indulging.

 In that decades-old offering, I participated in a tournament involving fighters from SNK’s most popular franchises in a Super Smash Bros.-style crossover, battling my way through the streets of south town to prove who’s the best. It’s a good, challenging game, but times have changed.

With just three characters to choose from, and a linear tournament-style progression, the roots of the series pale in comparison to the scope of its most recent installment. Even so, I spent an afternoon lost in its pixelated world, drawn in by its simplicity and surprising difficulty (clearly this game was a coin muncher in the 90s). 

There’s a certain charm to the design ethos of retro fighting games – the simplicity of facing opponent after opponent and slowly learning how to overcome even the toughest of obstacles with grit and determination. The grind is part of the fun.

And if one thing is clear, it’s that a taste of 1994 is still present in 2025’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. The last installment in the series was the similarly titled Garou: Mark of the Wolves, released over 20 years ago. 

With the much anticipated return to South Town, SNK has taken care to provide its beloved characters with a much-deserved revitalization. COTW brings back 17 fighters from past installments, including familiar faces such as Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui, and Rock Howard. In addition, there are five DLC characters which will become available with the game’s first season, including the surprising real-world additions of footballer Christiano Ronaldo and DJ Salvatore Ganacci. This vibrant roster of characters certainly drew me in, especially considering how each has their own personal story which is playable in the game’s new “Exploring South Town” RPG mode.

Here, I took on each character during a tumultuous journey through the game’s urban setting, exploring different areas on my way to one hundred percent completion and the final destination of every story arc: Geese Tower. For my first playthrough, I chose to play as Tizoc, the Luchador Wrestler/Vigilante. His hulking, imposing physique and colorful design drew me in. Also, his story was light-hearted, despite the fact that there really wasn’t any semblance of a complex plot besides a linear progression between opponents supplemented with fighting other battles around town to grind up to the level necessary to progress. 

While the narrative aspect of the story wasn’t the strongest, the relatively short timeline of each character’s arc coupled with fast-paced gameplay works to the game’s advantage. After completing the base map with a character, a new mode opened up dubbed South Town +, in which more difficult battles and a more open progression awaited, requiring a much higher skill ceiling. The novelty of exploring South Town does somewhat wear off after the first character. However, it provides a unique challenge for completionists and die-hard fans, even featuring two hidden final bosses which players can seek out depending on the characters they play as.

The game also features an arcade mode which harkens back to the linear style progression of the older Fatal Fury titles, and provides an enjoyable, over-the-top challenge.

Interestingly enough, one tool that I found to be incredibly helpful was the tutorial menu. There would be times during the story mode in which I hit a skill plateau, and needed to figure out a new way to progress beyond just over-leveling. Upon opening the tutorial menu (and brazenly picking an expert-level tutorial), I was made aware of so many interesting mechanics of the game which were easy to learn and drastically improved my fighting skills. This serves not only as a testament to the effectiveness of the in-game tutorial system, but also the intuitiveness of its gameplay. 

Like many modern fighting games, City of the Wolves boasts the option to alternate between simple and arcade style control schemes, with the former providing players the ability to perform combos at the click of a button, and the latter requiring delicate inputs for more precise techniques. I found that the arcade style elevated the experience as it made juggling opponents in the air with a tricky combo all the more rewarding. The combat is made even more engaging by other mechanics, such as REV arts, powerful skills which can be chained with enough skill to decimate the opposition.

After experiencing the original King of Fighters, I found that City of Wolves certainly sticks true to its roots, creating a combat system that simultaneously boasts a low barrier to entry, and a sky-high skill ceiling. It’s a rare treat among fighting games.

Overall, I have to confess that I was pleasantly surprised with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. A fun and intuitive combat system coupled with a roster of entertaining characters is a recipe for success. As a fighting game, it checks all the boxes, and certainly left me wanting to come back and experience even more of what one of the greatest fighting game franchises has to offer. There’s no doubt that SNK has succeeded in bringing the Fatal Fury series back into the spotlight. And I’d say its future has never been brighter. 

California-based intern Jatin Gundara serves as the Circle’s West Coast correspondent.

---