12 Leaked Fighters Push Fatal Fury's DLC Plans to 2029

Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star might be punching his way into a Fatal Fury game. That's the headline-grabbing detail buried inside a massive datamine of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves build 2.0.1, which surfaced on April 25 and points to a staggering 12 unannounced fighters spread across what appears to be five post-launch seasons. If the data holds, SNK is committing to this game through 2029.

The leak originates from the game's first anniversary update, which officially launched on April 24 and introduced Wolfgang Krauser as the opening character of Season 2. But the patch contained far more than SNK advertised. According to Reddit user Cednym, who interpreted the datamined files, character ID entries PL038 through PL049 reference a dozen new roster slots. Only two carry tentative identifications: PL047 appears to be Mr. Karate, and PL036, a previously skipped entry, reads as Kenshiro. The remaining ten are unnamed, meaning their identities and release order could still shift.

A Fist of the North Star crossover character in a Fatal Fury game is a wild swing, and I'm curious how SNK plans to make Kenshiro's pressure-point fighting style work within City of the Wolves' mechanics. If they pull it off, it could be one of the most interesting guest character implementations in a fighting game since Negan showed up in Tekken 7. If they don't, well, at least it's not another Ryu clone.

Five Seasons, Four Years

Cednym's breakdown maps the 12 fighters across Seasons 2 through 5, with rough annual windows: Season 2 in 2026, Season 3 around 2027, Season 4 in 2028, and Season 5 pushing into 2029. Names that appeared in earlier datamines from February and May 2025, including Duck King, Blue Mary, and Ryo Sakazaki, reappear in this expanded grouping. Several of those earlier predictions have already proven accurate; Krauser himself was flagged in a prior pass before being officially confirmed.

Five seasons would put City of the Wolves on a post-launch similar to Street Fighter 6, which has been drip-feeding characters on a comparable cadence since its 2023 launch. The comparison is apt beyond just scheduling. Ken Masters already crossed over into City of the Wolves during Season 1, and the two games are clearly competing for the same audience. SNK matching Capcom's long-tail content strategy is ambitious for a studio that doesn't have Street Fighter's install base to lean on.

That ambition makes more sense when you factor in the price cut. SNK permanently dropped City of the Wolves from $59.99 to $19.99 as part of its anniversary celebrations. A lower entry point paired with years of paid DLC is a model we've seen work before, most with fighting games that struggled at launch price but found their audience once the barrier dropped. I think this is a smart play from SNK. The game reviewed well but never broke through commercially the way it deserved to, and $20 for a fighting game with this much planned content is a strong pitch.

It's also a signal that SNK is betting big on the long game rather than moving on to the next project. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was the series' first new entry since Garou: Mark of the Wolves in 1999. After waiting 26 years to bring the franchise back, walking away after one season of DLC would have been a waste. Committing to four more years of support says SNK believes in this game's legs, even if the initial sales didn't set the world on fire.

SNK has not officially confirmed any plans beyond Season 2. Everything past Krauser and the tentatively identified Mr. Karate and Kenshiro is speculative, built on datamined IDs that could be reshuffled or scrapped entirely. But the track record of these datamines has been strong so far. The earlier leaks correctly identified characters that are now in the game, and the pattern of character IDs suggests a deliberate, structured rollout rather than placeholder data.

The ten unnamed slots are where things get interesting for the Fatal Fury faithful. SNK's back catalogue is enormous, spanning Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, King of Fighters, and Samurai Shodown. With named entries like Rick Strowd, Gao, Alfred, Franz, and Kasumi already in the mix alongside the Fist of the North Star crossover, the remaining mystery picks could pull from anywhere. If SNK is willing to bring in Kenshiro, the guest character ceiling is basically gone.