Oda on the mysterious silhouettes behind Rock Howard in Fatal Fury's teaser

We played and talked a lot about The King of Fighters XV at Gamescom the other day, but seeing as how a new Fatal Fury (Garou in Japan) was greenlit a month ago at Evo, we just needed to fight with Yasuyuki Oda to get some more intel about the new project.

"We already had a lot of great success bringing back Samurai Shodown, also a kind of IP that has been sleeping for a while", explains SNK's chief producer about how the new project came to be in the interview below. "And looking at Garou and Fatal Fury, I really consider it to be a very iconic SNK franchise. It also always had like a very deep story and lore around it, so the fans had been waiting for so long, I want to make sure I create something that keeps them happy, but also at the same making sure that we have features and accessibility options to allow other new fans to come in and play the game and have fun as well".

"After the announcement", the Japanese producer recalls about the reaction to it, "and especially being at Evo and on stage and feeling the energy from the crowd and such, and then going back to the hotel and seeing that, it was like, it actually made really like the mainstream news in Japan even, whenever we're at home and such. So I was really surprised but also very happy to see that kind of reaction".

Finally, when asked whether the released artwork could hide clues about the visual approach of the game or the fighters themselves, Oda-san clarifies that it's "less about the art direction, but I would say the main goal for us was to kind of get people a little bit of a tease of the world setting and the lore, so if you look behind the main character Rock [Howard] you kind of see two silhouettes of other characters, so we want people to think 'oh wow, they're going to show up... what kind of story is that going to be', start to really spark their imagination".

So, who do you think those two characters are and what type of story do you expect from the new Fatal Fury?