SNKCristiano Ronaldo made history as one of the first pro athletes to become a playable character in a mainline fighting game — but SNK’s decision to add him to Fatal Fury’s roster raised eyebrows.
In September 2024, Ronaldo teased that he had “something exciting in the making” with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. No further information was given on the subject, leading many fans to believe he’d simply be promoting the game in some way.
As a major sports figure, this collaboration alone was exciting for fighting game players… but they were decidedly less hyped when, months later, SNK revealed he would be a playable character.
Putting a real-life athlete in a mainstream 2D fighting game as a playable character is basically unheard of (except for Lebron James’ inclusion in MultiVersus, though that game is now completely defunct). However, Ronaldo wouldn’t be the only celebrity joining Terry and Mai in their adventures.
Award-winning EDM artist Salvatore Ganacci, previously announced to be making music for Fatal Fury, was also introduced as a playable character — a move that left most in the fighting game community scratching their heads. After all, as far as EDM artists go, Ganacci isn’t exactly the most popular (although he is very obviously a fighting game fan, judging by his action-packed music videos).
SNK went all-in on turning his music videos and on stage personality into a “joke” character that’s currently top tier. He got a ton of backlash when he was announced, but quickly turned into a fan-favorite almost immediately after release due to how much love the team clearly put into making him.
Related
We got the chance to speak with City of the Wolves’ Chief Producer Yasuyuki Oda, who answered our burning question about these unexpected additions: Why did they decide to add these characters to the game in the first place?
City of the Wolves producer opens up on Cristiano Ronaldo addition
Well, according to Oda, it’s all about spreading the good word of fighting games to as many people as possible by making Fatal Fury appealing to the mainstream sports and music worlds.
“We thought hard about how to please existing fans while also introducing Fatal Fury to people who have never heard of it before,” he told us. “We thought it would be important to reach out to people through a wide range of genres, not just those who like games.
“Going from there, we were able to make an offer to two famous people in the genres of ‘Sports’ and ‘Music’ and add them to the game. We were also able to see players use the new characters quite effectively during the Evo Showcase. Seeing the crowd shouting out the character lines and the players having fun with the characters, it felt like everyone was enjoying themselves.”
However, the fighting game community has a decidedly different opinion on the whole ordeal. In 2022, the Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Foundation purchased approximately 96% of SNK’s shares, something they’ve connected to Ronaldo playing for Al-Nassr, a football team in the Saudi pro league. Skeptical players are under the impression that Prince Mohammed allegedly had something to do with Ronaldo’s inclusion in the game, or at the very least, SNK may have been pressured by Saudi Arabia’s growing interests in the entertainment industry.
While this is all mere conjecture, fighting game developers as a whole have been making concentrated efforts to market their works to the broader world.
For instance, we got to speak with Guilty Gear Strive producer Ken Miyauchi in March, who told us that Guilty Gear’s first-ever guest character, Lucy, was part of an initiative to appeal to more fans outside the fighting game realm.
”We started to think about how we would be able to bring in newer players. There are various ways of achieving that goal, and one of them is to bring in a guest character,” he revealed.
Fighting game IPs have also been getting quite a few shows and films as of late; for instance, Tekken received an animated series on Netflix, while Guilty Gear got an anime series streamed on Crunchyroll — not to mention the forthcoming live-action film for Capcom’s Street Fighter franchise. (And who could forget The Walking Dead’s Negan becoming a guest character in Tekken 7?)
Saudi Arabia’s supposed involvement aside, we can confirm that fighting game developers are pulling out all the stops to appeal to a wider audience… but it’s clear that not all of these attempts at advertising are clearing the hurdle without stumbling.