Fatal Fury City Of The Wolves doesn’t have have just one guest character who happens to be a real person, but two. And that’s probably one too many, judging by the reaction of the latest character reveal for SNK’s upcoming fighting game.
Salvatore Ganacci will make more than just a musical appearance in Fatal Fury City Of The Wolves. Alongside his supervisory role on bringing 11 songs to the game, he’s also a playable fighter.
Lore-wise, Salvatore heard that a King Of Fighters tournament is “on the horizon” from his good friend (and fellow DJ) Duck King. Looking for inspo for his next anime music video, Salvatore heads to South Town to find that spark.
Duck King appearing in City Of The Wolves as the DJ fighter would have been cool for fans… but we’re getting another guest fighter instead.
Moveset wise, it’s… something. Salvatore Ganacci has made various music videos, at least one of them rendered in animation. And his antics in those wild and unhinged productions made the transition into Salvatore’s moveset as a fighter.
The fighting game community, however, has not received the announcement well. Compared to the worldwide presence of Cristiano Ronaldo, household name in households that play the beautiful game of football (a 2021 report by FIFA claims the sport to have five billion fans) with a massive following on social media (Wikipedia claims he’s the most popular sportsperson in the world with over 1 billion combined followings across platforms including 650,000,000 followers on Instagram), Salvatore Ganacci is a more niche name with about 400,000+ followers on Instagram and 520,000+ subscribers on YouTube. His most popular songs racked up about 20 million hits on Spotify, so he certainly has an audience. Just that the said audience don’t overlap with the fanbase that fighting games have.
But it’s not just the FGC collectively shouting “Who?” at the reveal trailer that caused this sour reception. Salvatore Ganacci is currently signed to MDLBeast, a record label based in Saudi Arabia, and his current music tour will see him performing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this April (coincidentally on the same weekend of City Of The Wolves’ release).
Previously, SNK (now owned by a Saudi Arabian organisation) said they still retain creative control of their game development.
Similar to Cristiano Ronaldo, Salvatore Ganacci also has a Saudi Arabian connection that may or may not lead to their inclusion in Fatal Fury City Of The Wolves’ base roster.
Reactions of the reveal, and fan comments on the announcement by the FGC has been not kind. To the point that some folks have expressed cancelling pre-orders.
It’s not that fans hate the Bosnian-Swedish DJ with an Italian stage name. The sentiment comes from seeing this upcoming fighting game is catering to a specific demographic away from the core fanbase. Especially when established characters the filled the same niche (in this case, Duck King) could have made a return in the fighting game roster.
Fighting games were historically the genre of video games that popularised the idea of massive crossovers. The Marvel VS Capcom series showed how cool it was for brands to crossovers. But in the age of Fortnite, celebrity and crossovers of different media are becoming more commonplace.
Though it looks like we found the limit of what’s an acceptable crossover collab in a fighting game.
Salvatore Ganacci isn’t the first DJ to make an appearance in high-profile video games. Dimitri Vegas has blazed this trail. He appeared in Mortal Kombat 11 as a Sub Zero skin (lending his likeness and voice to the established fighting game character), as a playable character in popular mobile battle royale game Free Fire and as a limited-time Elusive Target in Hitman World Of Assassination, where players have a shot at murdering the virtual rendition of a real celebrity.
Fatal Fury City Of The Wolves releases on April 24 for the PS4, PS5, PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S.