How Many Guest Characters Is Too Many? Tokyo Revengers X City of the Wolves Collaboration Sparks Fighting Game Debate

The fighting game community is in the middle of a fierce debate over the amount of guest characters coming to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.

On September 9, SNK announced two more guest characters coming to City of the Wolves: Manjiro "Mikey" Sano and Ken "Draken" Ryuguji from Tokyo Revengers. These popular shonen anime protagonists mark the latest in a string of guest characters for the game, which include Chun-Li and Ken from Street Fighter, pro footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, music artist Salvatore Ganacci, and Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star.

That’s a lot of guest characters for a game that’s only a little more than a year old — and while Ken and Chun-Li make sense given Capcom and SNK’s wealth of crossovers over the years, five guest characters from totally unrelated franchises feels a bit excessive to some players (myself included).

There’s a trend sweeping through popular fighting games lately where non-fighting game characters are being included in major titles like Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and of course, City of the Wolves. For example, Final Fantasy 7’s Tifa Lockhart is coming to Street Fighter 6 next year, while Baki’s Yujiro Hanma is set to make a splash in Tekken 8 in 2027.

While these one-off characters aren’t ruffling too many feathers within the fighting game community (Tekken is a franchise known for including one or two oddball guests), the sheer amount of guest characters in CotW is raising eyebrows — especially given the fact that they don’t come from other fighting games.

“Lmfaoo, adding anything bruh. Kenshiro was dope, but what the f**k is this,” one player wrote on X.

“Funniest fighting game roster of all time bro,” another said.

“Love these two, but how did they get in over Baki, or hell, even Tokita Ohma?” another asked, referencing popular martial arts anime Kengan Ashura (which, funnily enough, celebrated a collaboration with Street Fighter 6 not long ago).

It’s worth noting that fighting games in general are no stranger to guest characters from totally different worlds; the Mortal Kombat franchise is perhaps the best example of this, having added characters like Robocop, Omni-Man, Homelander, the Terminator, Alien's Xenomorph, and many other similar fighters to its rosters over the years. However, the argument can be made that these additions followed a general theme in keeping with the Mortal Kombat vibe and universe, whereas City of the Wolves’ guests are all over the place (in fact, it’s the first time a real-life athlete has been put in a mainline fighting game — and what is Ronaldo doing in South Town, anyway?).

Whatever the case may be, SNK clearly sees a path forward with these guest characters, and I’m honestly intrigued where they’ll take the franchise next. Either way, the sheer amount of characters they’re adding to CotW per season is laudable… though not everyone is hyped for each fighter they’re putting out. (Speaking of which, can we get some more ladies on the roster?)