The fighting game genre owes a collective debt toFatal Fury. It might not be as popular as Tekken, or as recognizable as Street Fighter, but in the ’90s this seriesruled the arcadesand established SNK as the fighting genre’s prime developer. Its large sprites, detailed backgrounds, and varied fighting styles made it feel perpetually fresh and exciting.
In 1999, the series bowed out gracefully with Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and relegated its characters to the cameo circuit. But in 2025, Fatal Fury reared its head once again, working off its ring rust with City of the Wolves. This leads to a question for both newcomers and longtime fans: how do all the games in the series actually rank? Let’s find out.
Fatal Fury: First Contact is enjoyable, but more as a novelty than an actual game, though it’s incredibly impressive for the time it launched. As a Neo Geo Pocket Color title, it had vibrant graphics, multiplayer support via link cable, and cute chibi-styled graphics. It’s a decent fighter on a console that has only two face buttons.
Is it something we can imagine anyone but a retro enthusiast playing in the 2020s? Not really. Technology has long since left Fatal Fury: First Contact behind, and it wasn’t even the best fighting game on the Neo Geo Pocket Color to begin with. That title goes to King of Fighters R-2.
In 2020, Fatal Fury: First Contact and King of Fighters R-2 were both ported to the Nintendo Switch as part of the first volume of the Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection.
Oh, to be an arcade enthusiast in 1991. If it wasn’t Street Fighter 2, it was Fatal Fury: King of Fighters. This isn’t just the first title in the Fatal Fury series, it was the first fighting game for theNeo Geohardware. The genre was on its way to a golden age, with SNK’s gorgeous sprite designs leading the charge.
So, how does Fatal Fury: King of Fighters stack up against its myriad sequels, spin-offs and sub-series? Not very well. This isn’t due to the game’s own flaws - by all contemporary standards, it is excellent - but due to how vastly improved each of its successors would go on to be.
If another person joins in during the Arcade mode in Fatal Fury: King of Fighters, you team up with them to fight against the CPU, rather than facing each other head-on.
It was indeed a wild ambition on SNK’s part to attempt to break into the world of 3D fighters with its most reliable 2D series. Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition doesn’t deserve quite as much hate as it gets, but it’s also a game only a hardcore fan could love.
The problems mostly stem from the PS1 port, where most Western fans experienced this entry. SNK couldn’t translate the hi-fi audio or 64-bit graphics of the Hyper Neo Geo 64 to the 32-bit PlayStation console. The result is scuffed sound effects, choppy animation, and a game that’s not quite nice to look at, even if it plays surprisingly well.
Fatal Fury 2 came out a year after the original and left its predecessor in the dust. The graphics and gameplay were vastly improved, the roster was updated, andMai Shiranuimade her debut - though female characters feature prominently in fighting games now, they were a rarity back then. This put the game on par with its closest competitor, the ever-popular Street Fighter 2.
An updated version called Fatal Fury Special was launched in 1993, further expanding the selection of characters and making gameplay adjustments. The game’s inclusion of an Art of Fighting character also laid the seed for The King of Fighters, a crossover that would eventually become a long-running series in its own right.
Fatal Fury 3 cemented the series as the prime defensive fighter for years to come. While 3D fighters like Tekken were still finding their feet, Fatal Fury 3 brought exciting gameplay centred around dodging and swaying out of the opponent’s way.
There were a few ill-advised additions, such as the RNG element that made it possible for characters to execute a special move randomly. Though imbalanced, it encouraged fans to learn the inputs for special moves, always hoping for that lucky break.
The Real Bout sub-series may not have had the staying power thatThe King of Fightersdid, but it still commands respect in the SNK fanbase. Launched just nine months after Fatal Fury 3, Real Bout overhauled the fighting system entirely.
Inputs were simplified, using three buttons instead of four. Though the focus on defence stayed in place, Real Bout was faster and more fatally furious than any game in the series yet. It’s Special edition, which acted both as an updated port and a sidequel, was even more so.
By 1998, Fatal Fury - like other SNK fighting games - had settled into a pattern of recycling older games' sprite work. This may have been a mark against it, if not for how well it streamlined the gameplay.
Cutting down on the bloat of previous entries, Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 continued its predecessors' trend of simplifying the gameplay in favour of maintaining a quick pace. The addition of new characters rounded out Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 as the definitive Fatal Fury game at the time.
A full quarter of a century passed before Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves revived the series. By this time, characters like Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui were known more for theircameos in other gamesthan their series of origin.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves featured some surprising cameos of its own, including football starCristiano Ronaldo. Yet it didn’t trade in its integrity for celebrity appearances: the gameplay was all that fans could hope for, and the title took great pains to introduce newcomers to the series.
Garou: Mark of the Wolves is set several years after the timeline of Fatal Fury or The King of Fighters. The characters were a little more rugged and somber in their design. The game still had flair, but in an understated way. This game was, in essence, a goodbye to the Fatal Fury series - and that’s how it stayed for 25 years.
If the visuals weren’t flashy, the gameplay was definitely refined. Even today, Garou: Mark of the Wolves is immensely popular among fighting game fans for its white-knuckle defense systems. There’s no lane-switching, and barely any gimmicks: it’s just your character, your game knowledge, and the quickness of your wrists. Garou represents the peak of SNK’s prowess as a developer that once ruled the 2D fighting space.
