Who is the most ambitious guest character in any fighting game? Terry and Mai in Street Fighter 6? No, SNK and Capcom have made games with each other before. Tekken in Street Fighter x Tekken? It was an ambitious game, but they’re still both fighting games despite being rivals. Marvel in Marvel vs Capcom? Definitely up there, but superheroes are still fictional action oriented characters. No, the crown for most surprising and ambitious fighting game guest in history has recently been taken by the latest announcement for SNK’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves: Cristiano Ronaldo.
Anyone with any knowledge of, well, anything knows just how insane this crossover is. Cristiano Ronaldo is the most popular football (soccer for Americans) player in the world today, possibly the most popular football player in the world ever. Now, why a football player would be starring in a Japanese fighting game title like it was FIFA is mystery.
Or, less of a mystery considering Fatal Fury/King of Fighters and SNK’s reputation in Mexico and South America. For the longest time, it was a joke that every child in South America can do a bnb combo in King of Fighters 94 and only gets better from there, a reputation that no doubt informed SNK’s decision to have Mr. Ronaldo guest star in City of the Wolves.
It’s simple math, 2+2=4 and a popular property in South America and Mexico plus a popular player from a popular sport in that same area is undoubtedly going to produce sales among their target audience. One could argue that this doesn’t really help with expansion into the United States and Japan, two markets that SNK is constantly hounding for, but one could also argue that doing something like this for one of their biggest audiences to reinforce their already established playerbase.
Regardless, we’re still in shock and haven’t fully processed this.