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SNK President has 10-year plan including RPG & action revamps on games like Fatal Fury

Kenji Matsubara said he'd like to bring old and new IPs up to AAA-level quality, including expanding franchises like Fatal Fury into new genres.

TJ Denzer

November 23, 2022 7:35 AM

Image via SNK

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SNK has been on a tear over these last few years and it expects to grow even more aggressively in the future by expanding with new IP and new takes on classic IP like Fatal Fury and Metal Slug. Whether it’s been the successful reboots and revamps of beloved franchises, or controversial funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and MiSK Foundation, SNK seems to be on a rapid path to the kind of prominence it held in the arcades of the 1980s and 1990s. It will only grow further as well. Recently SNK President Kenji Matsubara shared details of a 10-year plan which may include expanding franchises like Fatal Fury past their original genre and into game types like action and RPGs.

Matsubara shared details of this plan in an interview with Famitsu, as shared by Game’s Talk. In said interview, Matsubara shared that he wants to bring nearly all of SNK’s IP up to AAA-level, whether it’s new IP or existing favorites. He also mentioned that could include exploring new genres in the likes of Fatal Fury.

As mentioned above, SNK has been making a lot of moves in the last few years. Where the company fell off the map for quite a while without major releases, it came back to life in a big way with the reboot of Samurai Shodown and followed on that success with the recent King of Fighters 15. It’s even dipped its toes into genres outside the norm of its established IP. For instance, the Metal Slug franchise has been licensed to DotEmu, which is currently developing Metal Slug Tactics.

Fatal Fury as an action RPG sounds odd, but not unreasonable, and even then, a new and proper fighting game is already in the works with Garou 2 having been announced at EVO 2022. We’ll see what further twists the company has for us in the years ahead. Stay tuned for more SNK updates and announcements as they happen.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.