We have seen every kind of crossover in all sorts of games, SNK characters in Street Fighter, Negan from The Walking Dead in Tekken 7, everything ever seen in pop culture somehow ending up in Fortnite, but SNK is taking it to a whole other level. Not only are Ken and Chun Li from Street Fighter 6 coming to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, but Cristiano Ronaldo, yes, the football/soccer player, is also joining the playable cast of the fighting game. No, this is not an early April Fool’s joke; there’s actual gameplay.
SNK had announced some plans with CR7, AKA Cristiano Ronaldo, and Fatal Fury, but everyone had assumed that it was just single-player content or perhaps some cosmetics. But no, the Japanese developer has gone the distance and turned the football player into a soccer fighter like never before, for better or for worse.
The trailer shows Cristiano Ronaldo, well, being himself and running up against some familiar SNK wolves, only to actually go in-game and do soccer-themed special moves. His likeness is very convincing if you squint as hard as you possibly can, but that’s mostly because of the art style and not because of lack of effort on SNK’s part. And in an extremely confusing turn of events, Cristiano Ronaldo is not voicing Cristiano Ronaldo in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, why? Your guess is as good as mine.
Now, before you lose it and start aggressively pressing keyboard keys in the YouTube comments section, the idea, albeit seemingly raving mad, could definitely give the unreleased game the attention it deserves. Fighting games have been sidelined as a niche genre for a very long time, and something like this could bring it back to the mainstream in the weirdest way possible. Now, let’s see soccer game developers reciprocate and add Power Waves, Hurricane Uppers, and Rising Storms into a completely normal sports game.
At this point, SNK should just step it up and add Magnus Carlson, Michael Phelps, or maybe even somehow put Martin Scorsese in there to keep fans on their toes.
