Best SNK Character Appearances In Other Companies’ Games

Summary

• SNK characters have made memorable appearances in other companies’ fighting games, pleasing both fans.
• Character crossovers like Mai Shiranui in Dead or Alive 6 can create polarizing reactions among the gaming community.
• Terry Bogard joining Super Smash Bros. Ultimate showcases SNK characters entering new gaming realms.

SNK truly is the king of fighters…and we’re not just talking about the flagship video game series. Both before and after its short-lived stint in the console market, this Japanese company has become a household name to gamers thanks to its many popular fighting games. The King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and Fatal Fury are just some of its many series that have created some of the most iconic characters in gaming history.

But the company’s legacy doesn’t just stop with the games it’s developed. Perhaps more than any other company, SNK has regularly crossed over its characters into other companies’ video games. Usually, these crossovers have been in the form of other fighting games, given that the genre is what SNK is best known for. Here are the most memorable guest appearances of SNK characters.

8

Mai Shiranui

Dead Or Alive 5: Last Round

Fatal Fury’s femme fatale ninja, Mai Shiranui, was released as a DLC character as part of Dead or Alive 5’s second re-release Last Round. Mai was a faithful character to her original, being able to access her complex special move commands, while having an expanded move list to feel more at home with the Dead or Alive gang.

Mai’s appearance garnered praise from both fans of SNK and Dead or Alive, and because of that, it made her one of the only fighting game guest characters to appear in more than one game in a series. She would be brought back in Dead or Alive 6, once again as DLC, and while some were happy to see her back, others felt new guest characters should have gotten priority over her.

7

Geese Howard

Tekken 7

When Akuma from Street Fighter was revealed for Tekken 7, fighting game fans erupted in excitement. Naturally, it was a no-brainer that Bandai Namco would add a second iconic fighting game bad guy to the mix. Geese Howard, the antagonist of the Fatal Fury games, was the obvious choice for that slot. Geese is, in a way, the American counterpart to Heihachi Mishima, as both are corrupt leaders of crime syndicates, the main sponsors of the fighting game tournaments at the center of their games, and evil patriarchs of dysfunctional families that their games’ protagonists belong to.

Like Akuma before him, Geese’s gameplay was designed to make him feel like a mix between his original 2D self and a Tekken character. It was a divisive move among fans, who thought his gameplay felt too out of place in Tekken 7. Others, however, found the change in pace refreshing, as it made him stand out from the rest of the Iron Fist gang.

6

Haohmaru

SoulCalibur 6

Hot off the success of Tekken 7, Namco Bandai would once again reach out to SNK for its next fighting game, SoulCalibur 6, and the intent was clear: to bring a Samurai Shodown fighting to the world of souls and swords. Haohmaru felt perfectly at home in the 3D fighter, as he was a mirror image of SoulCalibur’s own resident Samurai Mitsurugi.

Like with Tekken 7 beforehand, the developers found a way to please fans of both series with his gameplay style finding a middle ground between the two, being a SoulCalibur character at the basic level with Samurai Shodown elements sprinkled in. One of the most interesting things about his arrival was that he’d get a Mitsurugi-themed costume and vice versa, making it hard to tell the two apart.

5

Terry Bogard

Fighting EX Layer

Fighting EX Layer, launched in 2018, was the comeback project for Arika, best known in the fighting game world for developing the Street Fighter EX series, the legendary fighter’s first foray into the third dimension. The EX games had the Street Fighter cast with original characters created by Arika, and because Capcom didn’t own these newcomers, they vanished for nearly two decades afterward.

When these characters finally made their comeback in 2018, they’d encounter a different legendary fighting game hero in Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard. It may have not been the reunion fans were hoping for, but Terry was still a welcome addition, and felt just as home on the roster as the Street Fighter gang did in the ’90s. Not long afterward, a female version of Arika’s Skullomania was added to SNK’s own newest fighting game, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy.

4

Iori Yagami

Million Arthur: Arcana Blood

One of the more obscure SNK crossovers came when Square Enix decided to turn its Million Arthur series into a fighting game. Million Arthur started as a free-to-play online card game in 2012, and Square Enix expanded the IP to consist of manga, anime, and video games of various genres. In 2018, the fighting game Million Arthur: Arcana Blood launched, and not long afterward, Iori Yagami from the King of Fighters games was announced as a playable guest character.

Iori’s appearance was the second part of a two-way SNK crossover, as around the same time, the character of Thief Arthur appeared in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. While a lot of players didn’t know who Thief Arthur was, it did prove the incentive for more people to check out her series.

3

Mai Shiranui And Kula Diamond

Dead Or Alive 6

After Mai Shiranui’s guest appearance in Dead or Alive 5, Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja pulled a surprise move when they brought her back for the game’s sixth entry in 2019. Like in DOA5, Mai would only be added as a DLC character, which was a polarizing move. This time however, she’d bring in another iconic female King of Fighters character.

Kula Diamond, the teenage cryomancer introduced in the NESTS saga in 1999, also joined the roster. Due to her ice powers, she felt a bit more out of place than Mai did, and relied on long-range projectiles unlike most other DOA characters. Still, with Dead or Alive experimenting with superpowered characters with the electricity-wielding NICO, there was precedent to work with. Naturally, Kula would get a story encounter with NICO where ice and thunder clashed.

2

Terry Bogard

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Super Smash Bros. is a crossover of many gaming icons of past and present, and fighting games have their fair share of characters on the roster. Following Ryu’s addition in Super Smash Bros. 4 and Ken’s inclusion in the base game of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the next representative of the genre was Terry Bogard in the game’s first DLC pass. Reportedly, Nintendo had hugely lobbied to get him in, and SNK happily obliged.

Like Ryu and Ken before him, Terry incorporated a lot of unique mechanics alluding to his fighting game origins, including the ability to input the original commands of his moves to perform stronger versions of his special moves. He’d also come with a massive King of FIghters stadium where many SNK icons look on in the background (with the notable exception of Mai Shiranui, who was cut due to concerns about the game’s age rating).

1

Terry Bogard And Mai Shiranui

Street Fighter 6

In 2024, Capcom announced a crossover that fans have waited over two decades to revisit, when Fatal Fury and King of Fighters icons Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui were announced as DLC characters for Street Fighter 6.

Seeing the two characters in Street Fighter’s more realistic graphics and with full English voice acting was a sight to see, given their original SNK games were much more anime-inspired. It was also announced that Ken and Chun-Li would be making the jump to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, marking the first time the two have ever appeared in a game without Ryu.