Look, we get that fighting games will always have guest characters. That is a given but we doubt anyone, except the developers at SNK, would have ever thought that footballer Cristiano Ronaldo would be a fighting game character. Yet here we are, as SNK has announced that Cristiano Ronaldo will be a playable character in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
The trailer first shows us Cristiano Ronaldo walking into a room and he soon gets surrounded by Fatal Fury characters. Then he is suddenly in the game, with the brief gameplay clip showing Ronaldo use some of his ball skills as attacks to win a fight. He even does the iconic Siu celebration to mark that he has won the fight. We live in a world where players will pick Cristiano Ronaldo as their main fighter in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
So, how has this come to be? Well, SNK is owned almost entirely by MISK Foundation, a Saudi non-profit foundation set up by Mohammed bin Salman, who became Saudi crown prince a few years later. Cristiano Ronaldo, meanwhile, plays his football these days at Al-Nassr FC, one of three clubs in Saudi Arabia which is 75% owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. It’s not a direct link from the PIF to MiSK, but they’re certainly working in similar circles.
A second beta test for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves will be running from March 27th to March 31st, with nine playable characters including Tizoc, Kain R. Heinlein, Rock Howard, Terry Bogard, Hotaru Futaba, B. Jenet, Mai Shiranui, Preecha, and Vox Reaper. There will be online modes including ranked, casual, and room match. Offline modes will include a tutorial and classic versus mode, and stages in both modes will be Training, Bar “Street Stars”, Universal Arena, and Training Ground. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves will be available from April 24th on PC, PS5, PS4, and Xbox Series XS.
Source: Press Release
