FATAL FURY SPECIAL - History of the first Fighting Game Cross Over !? 

Art of Fighting is actually a prequel to Fatal Fury and Ryo's story happens 10 years (approximately) before Terry's. So his appearance here was just a non-canonical dream match. A proper older version of Ryo appears in Fatal Fury WIld Ambition (a remake of the first Fatal Fury) tho. (KOF has its own separate timeline where SNK just ignores the time difference)

Love this game. It's one of three ACA NEO GEO games I've bought for the Switch so far, along with Aero Fighters 2 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. I still haven't made it to Ryo though. :(

Love FF Special man, this game was my first introduction to SNK back in the day, it's still one of my favorite fighting games of all time. Everything about it was top notch, especially the presentation. This was the game that basically birthed the idea of KOF.

When you said first crossover game I was like "what crossover?!", then you mentioned Ryo being in it and I was like ohhhhhh ok. I had no clue that he was a secret character in this game! I also didn't play much of it, I was more on Fatal Fury 2 at the time.

I played this one a lot back in the day. Always loved the sound Cheng makes on the knockout blow when you beat him. Waa hoo hoo

Also just a note, while Ryo was the first hidden fighting game boss fight, he wasn't the first hidden fighting game character. That honour goes to Reptile from the original Mortal Kombat, which predates FF Special by a year.

To any who may not know, this game was actually much smoother, and the shadows were not flickering. I'm not sure what was wrong with the capture in this video, but the original is not like this.

The stages (Mai,Tung,Geese,Billy..) are my favorites...better than many kof sadly..like the music. Today the gameplay is too rigide,but it still my nostalgic game.

I remember pouring quarters in the NeoGeo arcades. It didn’t matter what game it was.

I really enjoy your videos! Thanks for taking the time to make them.

Hi, TopHat! You forgot to talk about the soundtrack and the Geese theme: the SNES version is a unique version of Geese theme, you should hear it! Is my favourite song af all games. Greetings from Brazil. You have a Great channel and i've been waiting you talk about FF Special. Is so nostalgic and reminds me greats moments of my childhood. I remember when i play it for the first time, i was 4 years old, a cousing show me and played with me. i didn't know how to spell the game name because it was in Japanese, so i called Takara 😂. It was the first screen name. I just found the game 12 years later in a store. I was searching this game all my life just to hear the Geese Theme again. So, try to hear the Snes version of geese theme 💜 is perfect, you will understand when you heard.

I had the SNES version and loved it! it's an underrated conversion.

I didn't realize that Ryo from Art of Fighting appeared in this game and that it predated Akuma's appearance in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I learn something new every day.

The true start of the king of fighters series

Tung Fu Rue will forever have one of the most epic themes in any fighting game. His arranged version is a masterpiece.

I'm so glad I subbed to this channel. Good job buddy,love and respect from Southern California's Inland Empire !

I LOVE Fatal Fury Special! Easily my favorite among the 90s fighting game craze! I can't wait until you cover World Heroes! Another amazing fighting game series!

Besides the old April Fools' joke regarding Sheng Long in Street Fighter II, weren't the super moves and 'hidden' final boss in Fatal Fury SPECIAL the inspiration for Capcom to produce Super Turbo? I kinda think it's the same case for ADK's World Heroes 2 JET as well.

My glasses are going to go so far up my nose they'll slip off the back of my head, but technically the first crossover character in a fighting game is Karnov from the eponymous game was the final boss of Fighter History in March of 1993, when Ryo and Fatal Fury Special were released in October.

This is one of the games Masahiro Sakurai recommended to check out when he presented Terry Bogard for Smash Bros Ultimate.

That was good timing I picked up a Neo Geo this week so I will have to give that game a go.

SNK Fatal Fury special was a pretty good game for its time and it had a pretty good roster and of course my favorite character which is Terry Bogard.

I still have the boxed game for super Nintendo on my shelf, one of my favorites games ever.

Huh, I must have a bad case of nostalgia goggles. I had this game on Sega CD and I positively loved it!

Magnificent title, i'have to PS2, in one fatal Fury anthology vol1 ,is wonderful,i 'ignored one Port of Game gear, is exclusive of Japan, true, greetings from Mexico....

To this date, this game is still played competitively, having its own world tour championship series

About time you got back to SNK, I've been waiting for more SNK goodness.

I'd stopped playing street fighter 2 turbo and mortal kombat because of fatal fury 2. Then, there's fatal fury special. When super street fighter 2 came out, I was "who gives a shit? I'm with special."

One best conversions for Sega-CD at that time.

Top Hat Gaming Man, can you please do a video on The King of Fighters '94?

I frickin love the Fatal Fury series. Fatal Fury Special being my favorite. I plan to go to some tournaments for this game sometime when quarantine ends, cuz i wanna play with real people. I'm also trying to find out a way to play it online. Does anyone know how or is there not a way?

I was introduced to Fatal Fury and Art of fighting way late :( Middle school age. I wish I knew beforehand. I converted over to SNK games though I still play all fighter games.

Hey, Top Hat Gaming Man. I have some suggested fighting/beat 'em up games that you should cover in future videos. Fighting games: Tekken (original) World Heroes Mortal Kombat II BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Dead or Alive Super Smash Bros. (Nintendo 64) X-Men: Children of the Atom Marvel Super Heroes (with just only Marvel characters) Art of Fighting 2 Dragon Ball FighterZ Sonic Championship (Sonic the Fighters in Japan) Virtua Fighter 2 Bloody Roar Super Street Fighter IV Tech Romancer Double Dragon (Neo Geo) Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (1998 Arcade game) Savage Reign Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Pokken Tournament Samurai Shodown II Samurai Shodown (2019) Beat 'em Ups: Battle Circuit The King of Dragons Knights of the Round The Simpsons (Arcade) Warrior of Fate 64th Street: A Detective Story

*In Japan this game is still played competitively at a very high level in a few game centers/arcades. (before the virus) Mikado Game Center in Shinjuku and Ikebukuro would live stream competitive matches. There are also a few arcades near Osaka that have some really good players. Some of those dudes have never stopped playing the game since 1993. I purchased an AES Japanese copy of this game a few years ago in Japan and it had the original receipt from 1993 inside the booklet!*

Duck King stage and music is my favorite!

Getting to ryo is hard

This game is my absolute favorite SF competitor. I can't wait to see you cover Game Gear version! 10 90s video game magazine journalists dislike this video.

I always remember reading about the Neo Geo and even Turboduo, gfx, snk, etc. There certainly seemed to be a lot of fighting games of different types. I used to read all the King of Monsters articles since I was a fan of old games like Mail order monsters, Rampage, Movie Monsters.. etc. Naturally, ads and articles had these games as well though I think the only game I managed to play was Samurai Showdown and I can't recall if that was Neo Geo or not. Lately, I've been looking at Double Dragon and a nifty entry Double Dragon Neon. I'll go through the backlog and see if you've covered Double Dragon. Lordy, I still recall the cartoon series.

It was on Pcengine CD, not on plain Pcengine. It also used the arcade card which means extra memory along with the hundreds of megabytes the cd offered, or else the result would be just mediocre. Mega CD could be much better, a missed opportunity. Snes is very good and a hit, great port. Game Gear also great port for 8bit. As for the game itself its just a classic one and better than any SF2, in Japan it was treated as equal, in the west they just couldnt see beyond street fighter and mortal kombat.

After watching the Fatal Fury movies as a kid. I’ve always wanted SNK to make a Streets of Rage style beat’em up in the Fatal Fury world.

So I had special on the Game Gear and simply loved it! And Ryo was available from the word "fight!"

Great stuff!!!! I had FF special for the SNES, yeah the echo was annoying but the cheap A.I. really ruined the experience even though I love the game.

I loved the character roster and it had a lot of cool ideas . I still own one of the sequels Real bout Fatal Fury Special on Saturn.

If you have Fatal Fury Special, then you don't need Fatal Fury 2.

Awesome game, and whatever journalist or other haters say, the super famicom port of this title is one of the best fighting game you could have for this system, i also recomend the Super famicom port of Art of Fighting 2 and world heroes 2, both are great (obviously the Neo Geo originals are better, but for that reason the 16 bits ports of street fighter II are trash too, because the arcade original is superior) even the Mega drive/Genesis port of Samurai Shodown is gold and a top 3 fighting game for this Sega 16 bit machine, please, stop saying all Neo geo ports for SNES and Mega Drive are trash, of course there are terrible ports like the first Fatal Fury or Samurai Shodown on the SNES, but not all of them are bullshit. Great video as always, keep the hard work , I never miss one of your fighting game history videos

maybe, irrelevant info. iori from kof was a secret character in real bout on the gameboy from what i remember. mai was a secret character in samurai shodown and nakoruru was also secret in kof 95 also on gb. i regret giving away my gameboy 20 yrs ago... i had toshinden on it and that game was so fluid to play.

Loved the video 📹thanks. I played art of fighting and fatal fury and street fighter 2 in the arcade and saga genesis console. The difference between both games to me" the arcade and consoles version's is that snk dose a better job at storie telling for one player mode and the artwork and design are beautiful but when it comes to the fighting mechanics is so complicated and complex compared to street fighter 2 snk fighting games to me you need to play and play just to get the fighting mechanics down compared to street fighter it was smoother and the fighting system was fun and the more you play the more you found out difference combo's and jabs you can do "that to this day fighting games still copy and play. Street fighter didn't have a intriguing storyline like art of fighting or fatal fury but street fighter 2 had a better smoother fighting style that anyone can get into and didn't Matter what the storyline was at the end of the day you just wanted to beat up your friends and family members and tell them im the best. So in my opinion snk was better at one player mode storyline and street fighter was just a better fighting game to practice and get better and find new ways to get involved in that style of fighting game that continue to evolve to this day with street fighter alpha and street fighter vs xmen capcom vs marvel and the rest well you guys know already" but what im trying to say is that that system street fighter 2 was using is still relevant to this day.

One of my favorite Fatal Fury games!

I just downloaded this game on my Nintendo switch lite after seeing this video lol. The stages look so vibrant and fun, this game is hard as fuck though. I love just about all of those old school 2D fighting and beat em up games from that early 90s era

I like how he said he was gonna review all the version of street fighter 4 but never did it’s been 3 months now 😔

Awesome! Please post more SNK content.

Nice video but I was never into SNK fighting games, more of a Capcom guy. If you haven’t already you should cover the Mortal Kombat series.

I hope a King of Fighters video is not far away!

Nice video!

Anyone else miss SNK's sprite based fighters. New fighters still feel good but the 3D presentation doesn't hold up as well as their old fighters. With the exception of the new Samurai Showdown it's moving in the right direction for artistic presentation, Tekken 7 however has the best looking version of Geese Howard and that's not right.

One of the factors that influenced the creation of KOF.

Didn't Geese appear as a special secret boss in AoF2?

The game gear version wouldn't have looked as pixelated on real hardware, so yeah, I agree that it looks lovely. Really wanted to have that game back then, but it wasn't available at local shops. Got Power Rangers the Movie instead... which was also pretty good

Great video It'll be great if you can find lesser known fighting Games

Great video ime Glad your still soldering on your content is so high quality it reminds me of old Game master shows.

Didn't realize Ryo is in it ha ha. Cool

First true crossover i can think of is fighters Megamix for the Saturn, vf2/fighting vipers, there might be something earlier though. That was just the first time i remember seeing something like that 😁

like

There is also a Japan only version of Fatal Fury Special (Real Bout Special over there) on the original gameboy, and it is pretty good for a gameboy game. You get Iori from King of Fighters instead of Ryo as a secret character. A mention would have been nice!

With playable characters, yes. But Final Fight 2 has Chun Li and Guile in the stages. EDIT: Oh, I forgot. Slam Masters was released BEFORE FF Special. Haggar is a playable character, so it's the first crossover in fighting games.

Great video once again Top Hat. Also yes the Game Gear version of Fatal Fury Special is actually INCREDIBLY impressive and completely playable even with the cuts that had to be made to it, which is understandable given the hardware it was on. Still, Takara deserves a huge amount of props for having a solid version on the handheld. Takara's Game Gear port of Samurai Shodown is also legit solid. It also had to have cuts made to it but like the GG port of Fatal Fury Special it's still a VERY impressive version that's totally playable.

I'd love to see marvel nemesis if you haven't covered it yet.

Fatal Fury and Street Fighter have always mirrored each other: SF1=FF1 SF2=FF2 SF2 Hyper Fighting=FF Special Alpha series=Real Bout series SF3=Garou

The SNK fighting games always did great on handhelds. Also Battle Arena Toshinden on GB is another great fighter on primitive hardware. I wanna say whoever did KoF on GB also did BAT, or at least it sure looks and plays that way. Pretty sure Takara published them, not sure about development though.

Big Daddy Top Hat, please discuss the history of SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy sometime.

The ACTUAL first crossover in a fighting game was Fighter’s History which had Karnov as its final boss, 6 months before Fatal Fury Special released

Ryo's inclusion doesn't make it a crossover game. Art of Fighting is a prequel of sorts to Fatal Fury, so he already belongs in that universe and isn't out of place at all. At best, he could be considered a guest character. But that doesn't make Fatal Fury Special a crossover game any more than Link's inclusion in SoulCalibur II makes it a crossover with Zelda, or Kratos' inclusion in Mortal Kombat 9 makes it a crossover with God of War, even though those characters had their own stories created to explain why there were there. While Fatal Fury Special may have inspired King of Fighters, it wasn't actually until King of Fighters '94 where we actually saw the first true crossover (as well as the first tag-team based fighter) with SNK bringing in lots of characters from totally separate universes, including Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury obviously, but also Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier and a bunch of new characters created specifically for the game.

Please could someone tell me why all the shadows are flashing? - I have this issue on retro arch on RPi3B+ and if anyone knows a setting to change to fix this (or if this is how its supposed to be?) I would be really grateful!

I think fatal fury wasn’t too far behind the leaders in terms of gameplay and character story’s. Had some great time’s with FF2. Nostalgia is a beautiful thing

Almost 30 years since it's release and this game still looks and plays wonderful. Tung Fu Rue's stage is still one of the most spectacular fighting stages ever made.

I had this game for the Game Gear back in the day and i loved it. Also clearly the best early SNK Fighting Game. Btw. in the anime Highscore Girl is a scene were the female protagonist plays it on the Game Gear.

Woah, you haven't looked at Real Bout yet? That's the only game I've ever seen with different blocking animation.

I love Fatal Fury Special. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Mai related to Gen-an from Samurai Showdown? If so, I guess the cross-over went even further!

Also Fatal Fury 2 Special had a better soundtrack than Street Fighter 2!! Music was better than Street Fighter 2!!

Also the pal SNES version had four less megs than the American and Japanese versions and is missing Tung Fu Rue.

I really hated Next Generation magazine for their anti-2D bias and pretentious air.....

"Hmmm . . . Dicks." - Top Hat Gaming Man (2020) Never change, man.

I think the Real Bout series should be discussed.

SO. MUCH. FUN.

Yes The king of fighters 94 to XIV for future video

AWESOME MATE 🎩!!!

In terms of story, this FF is not canonical... although it could be for the King of Fighters timeline.

hey, it is thursday and thursdays are for big daddy top hat only.

You've seriously have started to become one of my favorite RU-vidrs, love the content!

Please talk bout street fighter 1,mortal kombat 1,tekken 1,& soul blade

Billy Kane's only face first defeat position is absolutely pathetic

Geese' Canadian cousin Canadian Goose sought revenge for his death.

I remember playing street fighter...or fighting street at the waterworld in Sacramento...I thought i discovered something😂😂😂didn't realize it was before street fighter 2 lol kids

Geese needs to stop pissing off expert martial artists who can throw fire out of their extremities.

Akuma is just a pallet swapped Ryo Sakazaki

I had the Game Gear version when I was kid, it made me want the Sega version even more lol

Good video but nothing can touch Street Fighter 2 .The sprites looks so thin in this game and there movements if a bit stiff theres alot missing in this game .Personally I think Snk tried to hard here how ever I did enjoy World heroes 2 jet and Sumaria showdown 2.

You forgot street fighter 2 championship edition

great video as usual, fighting game thursdays is the best!

happy 30th anniversary fatal fury!!! :3