Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves guest character flood sparks fighting game community debate

SNK announced two more guest characters for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves on September 9 — Manjiro "Mikey" Sano and Ken "Draken" Ryuguji from the shonen anime Tokyo Revengers. They join an already crowded guest roster that includes Chun-Li and Ken from Street Fighter, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, music artist Salvatore Ganacci, and Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star. For a game just over a year old, that's a lot of outside faces.

The fighting game community isn't uniformly thrilled. On X, reactions ranged from baffled to amused: "Lmfaoo, adding anything bruh. Kenshiro was dope, but what the f**k is this," wrote one player. Another called it the "funniest fighting game roster of all time." Some fans questioned the selection logic — one asked why Mikey and Draken got in over Baki or Kengan Ashura's Tokita Ohma, especially since Kengan Ashura recently ran a Street Fighter 6 collaboration. The Ronaldo addition draws particular scrutiny: it's the first time a real-life athlete has appeared in a mainline fighting game, and the question of what a Portuguese footballer is doing in South Town doesn't have an obvious answer.

Guest characters aren't new to fighting games — Mortal Kombat has been pulling in Robocop, the Terminator, Omni-Man, Homelander, and Xenomorphs for years. But MK's guests tend to fit a shared ultraviolent, pop-culture-horror aesthetic. City of the Wolves' lineup — a footballer, a DJ, anime delinquents, and a post-apocalyptic martial artist — has no such unifying thread. The broader trend is real too: Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy 7 is heading to Street Fighter 6 next year, and Baki's Yujiro Hanma is confirmed for Tekken 8 in 2027. Guest characters are clearly a commercial strategy across the genre, not just an SNK quirk.

SNK shows no signs of slowing down, and the sheer volume of additions per season is at least keeping City of the Wolves in the conversation. Whether every pick lands with the core fanbase is another matter — and with the roster skewing heavily male, some players are already asking when the women get their turn.