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We sit down with the City of the Wolves producers to see if Seiji’s boyhood dream will ever be fulfilled.

The Tokyo Game Show is going on right now, and developer SNK is pulling out all the stops to promote Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, the long-awaited sequel to legendary fighting game Garou: Mark of the Wolves that fans have been waiting more than 25 years for. In addition to massive character art displays, SNK has a whole team of City of the Wolves cosplayers plus a new playable demo of the game featuring the return of ninja girl Mai Shiranui.

Mai made her first appearance in Fatal Fury 2, which was released in 1992, and quickly became a fan favorite thanks to her fast-paced playstyle, flashy special moves, and, undeniably, her physique and costume design.

All of those left a deep impression on our Japanese-language reporter Seiji Nakazawa, who was a big Fatal Fury fan growing up. Seiji of course also played The King of Fighters, SNK’s crossover/anthology series which included characters from Fatal Fury, such as Mai, and other SNK series. During the fighting game craze of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, a new King of Fighters game came out every year, and while Seiji enjoyed them all, he also felt an annual disappointment. Why?

Because Mai’s costume never got torn.

Now, this wasn’t entirely a case of wishful thinking by teenage-boy Seiji. See, in the The King of Fighters characters fight in teams of three, and Mai’s two most frequent official teammates, karate practitioner Yuri Sakazaki and Muay Thai bartender King, both had outfits which got torn when they got defeated by an opponent’s special attack. For Mai, though, this never happened, despite the fact that her slinky kunoichi outfit doesn’t appear to be made of any sturdier fabric than Yuri’s karate gi or King’s tuxedo shirt.

So when Seiji secured an interview with City of the Wolves chief producer Yasuyuki Oda (who joined SNK in 1993) and producer Joshua Weatherford (who joined in 2016) at Tokyo Game Show, he was determined to get an explanation from them for this discrepancy that had been filling him with frustration for more than half his life.

Still, Seiji couldn’t just jump right into this question without also asking a little about City of the Wolves.

Seiji: So, to start off, how did it come about that the Fatal Fury series is getting a revival after being dormant for 26 years?

Oda: Well, the previous game, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, ended with the central story unresolved, but after that SNK went bankrupt. So there was always the feeling that we had unfinished business for the series.

When SNK was revived and I came back to the company, the first series I said I wanted to bring back was The King of Fighters, and that’s where we started from. Then next we brought back Samurai Shodown, and now it’s Fatal Fury’s turn. I’m hoping that while continuing to develop the King of Fighters franchise, we can bring back various SNK IPs.

Seiji: So would you say you had to wait for the right time?

Oda: Maybe? Actually I wanted to do it sooner (laughs).

And now it was time for Seiji to start maneuvering towards the topic he’d come here to discuss.

Seiji: Speaking of The King of Fighters, I remember as a kid it really amazed me how when Yuri Sakazaki and King get hit by a special move that ends the round, their clothes burst. That really felt like a game changer for me. But I’ve always wanted to ask, why don’t Mai’s clothes burst?

Oda: So, King’s first appearance is in the first game in the Art of Fighting series. When she first shows up, she’s dressed like a man, and we wanted it to be a surprise reveal that she’s a woman [when her shirt gets torn], so she’s the only one whose clothing gets torn.

Seiji: Ah, so it was a storytelling mechanism.

Oda: Then, when we did the sequel, Art of Fighting 2, we made the decision that all the characters, both men and women, would have their shirts get torn if they got knocked out with a special move. The only exception was the character Takuma because he doesn’t wear a shirt, so his chest bleeds instead.

Then when we made the first King of Fighters game and were including King and Yuri, we carried over the mechanic of their shirts getting torn, since it had became a memorable tradition.

Seiji: But if King’s shirt got torn for storytelling purposes in Art of Fighting 1, why did everyone’s get torn in Art of Fighting 2?

Oda: There wasn’t any particularly strong reason. We just thought it might seem kind of strange if only the female characters’ shirts got torn, so we decided to apply that evenly across the entire cast.

Seiji: But, Mr. Oda, with all due respect, you just said there wasn’t a particularly strong reason for everyone’s shirts to get torn, correct? So then shouldn’t it stand to reason that there doesn’t need to be a particularly strong reason for Mai’s clothing to get torn too?

Oda: KOF is essentially an all-star game that pulls from many different series, so I think we wanted the characters from Art of Fighting to retain some of that series’ special characteristics, since they form a part of their identities. So it was basically a matter of Art of Fighting characters continuing to have their clothing torn as they had before.

▼ Weatherford looking relieved that Seiji’s weird questions are all related to decisions made before his time with the company, allowing him to sit this part of the interview out.

Seiji: I understand. In that case, I would like to make a request here and now. I think it’d be fine for everyone [in City of the Wolves] to have their clothing tear, so can you please make Mai’s clothing tear just a little bit?

Oda: It won’t tear.

Seiji: This is something that I’ve been looking forward to every year since long ago. Doesn’t it pain you to leave that childhood dream unfulfilled?

Oda: I think it will continue to go unfulfilled, forever and ever.

Seiji: So, in City of the Wolves, the cast features Rock Howard, the son of former antagonist Geese Howard, and Preecha, the young disciple of hero Joe Higashi. There’s a sense of one generation ending and another beginning, so could one say that this is an ideal opportunity for Mai’s costume to tea-

Oda: No, one couldn’t.

Seiji: Will we be seeing any other characters from previous Fatal Fury games joining the cast as DLC characters?

Oda: I think that’s a definite possibility.

Seiji: In Mark of the Wolves, Geese was said to be dead, but he’d already died once before in the Fatal Fury series and then been brought back, and he’s also appeared in other games as a nightmare/ghost. Is there a chance he’ll show up in City of the Wolves as a DLC character?

Oda: Within the City of the Wolves story, Geese is dead.

Seiji: So there’s no chance of adding him in?

Oda: I can’t say for certain. If more and more people ask for him, we’ll probably start to feel like maybe we should put him in the game.

Seiji: So, along those same lines, if enough people ask for Mai’s clothes to be tor-

Oda: That, and only that, will not happen.

Seiji: It won’t?

Oda: It will not.

Seiji came away from his conversation with Oda with an understanding that, while Mai’s original ninja outfit might not look all that durable, and even her new City of the Wolves attire doesn’t seem like it should be able to stand up to all the energy waves and burning fists that get tossed around in a Fatal Fury fight, her outfit is protected by something stronger than silk or leather: Oda’s iron will.

Though it didn’t come up in the conversation, it’s also worth pointing out a key difference between King and Yuri’s costumes and Mai’s, which is that the first two of them wear bras (which are exposed when their shirt and karate gi top are torn), while Mai, at least in her original costume, quite clearly has no upper-body undergarments on. While a glimpse of lingerie wasn’t beyond what was permissible at the time, full on toplessness was beyond what a developer could get away with in an arcade game.

But hey, if Mai has been able to keep her shirt on and keep her fan base for a quarter century, that’s unlikely to change in City of the Wolves, and if we can get serious for a moment, Seiji, like all of Mai’s fans, is just happy to have her back.

Related: Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves official website
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Screenshots: YouTube/SNK OFFICIAL
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[ Read in Japanese ]

[ Read in Japanese ]