On Friday, April 24th SNK uploaded a new seven and a half minute trailer to YouTube to celebrate the additional of DLC character Wolfgang Krauser to the roster of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, the latest entry in the Fatal Fury fighting game series. The video was also timed with the one-year anniversary of the initial launch of the game.
The short movie was directed by Masami Ōbari, who is also credited as storyboarder and creative producer. Ōbari, a veteran of the anime industry with many credits to his name also directed two Fatal Fury TV specials in the early 1990’s. He would later direct Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture in 1994. This new animated short actually serves as a sequel to “Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle” (the 2nd TV Special), featuring the return of Wolfgang Krauser as the villain. Among many tributes to his previous work, Ōbari here brings back the clean-shaven design for young Krauser in a flashback sequence. Krauser is voiced by Yutaka Aoyama in Japanese, and Patrick Seitz in English.
In the new animated short, Krauser is shown confronting series protagonist Terry Bogard in a church somewhere in Southtown. Alongside Terry is his younger brother Andy and the brothers’ longtime friend Joe Higashi. While outnumbered, Krauser’s immense power proves to be too much even for those three veteran martial artists. It will taking a surprising turn of events to turn the tide and give the heroes a chance of defeating a monster they thought died long ago.
You can watch the trailer both in English and Japanese below:
English
Japanese
Now that you’ve had a chance to watch it, let’s get the most striking aspect: This is the first time Street Fighter characters have appeared in animated format alongside SNK characters. Yes, the characters have crossed over in video game format for years, but here we have Chun-Li and Ken from Street Fighter appearing in an anime alongside Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui. Beyond that, it’s refreshing that the animation itself is patterned after the style we got back in the 90’s (likely due to Obari returning to direct). There’s a lot to love here for fans of the original 90’s anime, though sadly neither the Japanese or English version features returning voice actors from those older installments.
The new animated short is to tie in with the release of Krauser as a new DLC character. The character was first introduced in 1992’s arcade game Fatal Fury 2, known in Japan as Garō Densetsu 2: Aratanaru Tatakai. In story he is a gigantic and powerful German nobleman nicknamed ‘The Emperor of Darkness’ who serves as the final boss of the game. In canon it was claimed that he committed suicide after his defeat at the hands of Terry. However, now that has been retconned to show that Krauser was only biding his time in the shadows, waiting to gain revenge against his hated rival.
Krauser was made into a playable character in 1993’s Fatal Fury Special and would make additional appearances in later Fatal Fury games. Krauser also crossed over into SNK’s King of Fighters franchise in its 1996 edition. However, outside of his sprite being imported into certain reissues of older King of Fighters games, he has not been a fully playable character since 1998’s Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is the latest entry in the Fatal Fury (Garō Densetsu in Japan) franchise. It is a direct sequel to 1999’s Garou: Mark of the Wolves and by extension the first new entry in the franchise in over 25 years. It is available for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. Krauser is part of the game’s 2nd season of DLC, and the fourth character released for this wave of content. Previous characters released this season were Kim Jae Hoon, Nightmare Geese Howard, and Blue Mary. After Krauser, a mystery character has been announced for May. To close out the season, Fist of the North Star’s Kenshiro has been announced as a special crossover character for June.
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