SNK has been all about returning to and supporting older games over the last several years, and SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda has been the spearhead for that approach. Not only has this led to plenty of quality-of-life improvements and rereleases for games from across the company’s history, but it has also led to the revival of Garou: Mark of the Wolves.
The new Fatal Fury/Garou game is shaping up to be a direct successor to the 1999 classic fighter, and Oda has made it clear across multiple interviews that revisiting that specific series was a goal for him since rejoining SNK in 2014.
In a recent interview with VGC, Oda not only reconfirmed that this new Garou project is something he has been championing since his return to the company, but will also collaborate with several key team members from the past for the game because the SNK now is very different from back in the Fatal Fury days.
“When I first came back to SNK, that was one of the first things I said: ‘it’s been left incomplete, we need to do it.’ But the biggest problem was basically outside of the development team,” Oda told VGC. “A lot of the higher-ups, the marketing, the management people, they joined after the Playmore days. So, they didn’t really understand a lot of the golden era stuff like Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury. They didn’t really understand the work, so it took a while to convince them. But the Evo announcement, obviously, was a really big announcement.”
During his time away from SNK with Dimps, Oda was shocked that there was never a sequel of some kind, wishing that the story would be continued. But now, he and the development team are ready to move forward with that vision.
Oda and 10 other people internally were present for the development of some of those older Fatal Fury titles, but that wasn’t enough for them.
Along with the newer developers who will play a key role in this 23 years in the waiting follow-up, Oda has confirmed that some staff who originally worked on the original who are no longer with SNK are being called up and asked to collaborate in “certain ways.”
Outside of that, Oda also commented on the SNK developer CDs that were discovered and seemingly leaked files and assets from a canceled sequel from the early 2000s, saying that while a lot of time has passed, things that were included in that original design may “survive in the new title.”
As for additional information, Oda says that the game will not be called Gaoru 2, will more closely resemble an original Fatal Fury title, and will be developed in a 3D engine much like all of SNKs more recent projects. Additionally, while he and the team aren’t ready to discuss the roster for the game yet beyond confirming Terry’s inclusion, they aren’t shutting down the idea of a crossover in its current or upcoming games.
Related: SNK vs. Capcom could make a return in the future due to fan and developer interest
You can read the full interview with Oda-san, which delves further into SNK’s near-complete acquisition by a Saudi Arabian holding company, the relations between Japanese fighting game developers, and more on VGC.
