Author: Robert Jones
Publisher: Bitmap Books
Pages: 468
As a videogame fan since the early 1980’s, I’ve grown up with many series, seeing them develop from new games through to thriving franchises. One of the series that probably defined my early teenage years was Street Fighter, from playing the first game on my humble Amiga (a rubbish port of a fairly mediocre game) to discovering its excellent sequel Street Fighter 2 in arcades and on my cousin’s Super Nintendo (I also had the Amiga version – another rubbish port!) I played the heck out of that series and continue to do so today.
Growing up visiting 90’s arcades, I became aware of the slew of Street Fighter clones that were hitting the floor, but the one that probably stood out most to me was SNK’s Fatal Fury. Running on the company’s NeoGeo hardware, a still fascinating system which effectively combined arcade architecture with a cartridge based system, effectively allowing arcade boards to run on a similarly specced home console, Fatal Fury was one of the earliest NeoGeo games I became aware of. Initially I dismissed this game as a simple Street Fighter knock off and went about my business, but later into the 90’s and early 2000’s I revisited SNK’s series thanks to the fantastic King of the Fighters games, as well as the SNK vs Capcom games.
Fatal Fury as a series has fascinated me in recent years with its characters jumping ship into other franchises (series poster boy Terry Bogard even pops up in Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate!) so I was super interested to take a look at this latest release from Bitmap Books chronicling the games from conception to the latest installment, City of the Wolves, which was released back in early 2025.
Opening with a foreword from SNK’s current director of fighting games, Yasuyuki Oda, the bulk of the reading comes in the form of a 30 page oral history of the series written by Robert Jones. This is an absolutely fascinating read for anyone who is a fan of Fatal Fury or simply 90’s era fighting games in general, dipping into some fantastic facts and anecdotes throughout the series’ almost 10 year initial reign, as well as its resurgence with City of the Wolves. Tucked in among this section we learn about series creator Takashi Nishiyama jumping ship to SNK from Capcom where he famously created the original Street Fighter. The first Fatal Fury was initially envisioned as Nishiyama’s ideal sequel to Street Fighter, bringing in series innovations such as the dynamic camera and lane switching in combat, but was pipped to the post by Capcom’s own Street Fighter 2, forever to be labeled a simple knock off. What becomes clear throughout this whole essay is that Fatal Fury is a series that is almost as important to the evolution of competitive fighting games as its more famous cousin, and is a series that often doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
It’s also worth noting that the Fatal Fury series, along with its spin off series Art of Fighting, was one of the first one on one fighting game series to place story alongside the action with cutscenes depicting the epic battle of siblings Andy and Terry Bogard who, along with their friend, Joe Higashi, enter the King of Fighters tournament in their home city of South Town to take revenge on local crime boss Geese Howard for the murder of their father. South Town is the setting for most of the games in the series and this book celebrates that with a wonderfully illustrated fold out map, with key landmarks listed and described in detail.
Indeed it’s illustrative work that makes up the bulk of this coffee table book and Bitmap Books have jam packed it full of fantastic production artwork, massive multi page spreads of the remarkably detailed pixel art from the game, as well as the incredible and iconic promotional illustrations from SNK artists Shinkiro and Eiji Shiroi. While we were sent a PDF for review I was able to go hands on with a physical copy of the book at MCM Comic Con and it’s a wonderfully hefty beast. Hardback with some gorgeous cover art, it could easily be unwieldy at 468 pages, but the binding allows it to open up for a bit of light reading or oggling over the fantastic artwork which is even bolder and striking on the page!
With all the games in the series available on most formats thanks to either multiple SNK/NeoGeo compilations or Hamster’s fantastic Arcade Archives collection, this is a great time to explore the Fatal Fury series, and this book is a brilliant read for anyone who’s either a fan or a newcomer alike. While it’s a shame that the book doesn’t delve into the shorter lived Art of Fighting series as well, there’s more than enough here to inform and inspire fighting game fans; well worth adding to the collection!