Cristiano Ronaldo brings Fatal Fury back from the dead with City of the Wolves crossover

Cristiano Ronaldo has announced that he’s doing a direct crossover with City of the Wolves, a game set to revive the Fatal Fury franchise. While nothing is set in stone just yet, there’s a chance that the football legend will be a playable fighter in the game, bringing a level of hype the series has never had.

And, while the Fatal Fury franchise has had its fair share of spinoff games and other offshoot properties keeping SNK’s footprint in the fighting game genre alive, it’s been almost 3 decades since Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, the last proper FF game, came out.

King of Fighters has long since overshadowed the series it came from, and Terry Bogard has guest starred across multiple games to keep the SNK’s poster boy relevant. However, Fatal Fury itself feels more like a relic than a staple gaming franchise.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed my time getting to play Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves at EVO 2024, it’s also a long-dormant fighting game series that could really use a boost to hit the same level of mainstream popularity as big hitters like Street Fighter and Tekken.

To bring the hype, CotW’s developers looked to a unexpected place: Football legend Cristiano Ronaldo.

The series and its KOF spinoff have maintained a dedicated following, and phenoms from other fighting games like Tekken legend Arslan Ash and EWC 2024 Street Fighter 6 winner Xiaohai are widely known for being some of the best King of Fighters players in the world.

However, KOF 15 also consistently sits near the bottom of signups amongst other fighting game titles at the world’s biggest tournaments like EVO and Combo Breaker. SNK fighting games have been very niche for a long time, though they’ve maintained a huge audience in Mexico and South America. This is in large part due to SNK arcade cabinets being cheaper than the competition in the 90s/early 2000s.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves really needs some hype behind it to topple the best titles in the fighting game genre, and getting one of the biggest celebrities in the world attached to the game in a crossover no one could have predicted may do the trick. The Fatal Fury series is not only getting a proper revival, but it’s got the potential to thrive.

It isn’t clear to what extent Ronaldo will be collaborating with the game, but just his short teaser trailer has put millions of eyes on the game that may not have even heard of it before.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is set to release on April 24, 2025. We’ll keep you updated on when the full extent of Ronaldo’s crossover is known.