SNK Producer very interested to work with Capcom more in the future after Terry and Mai join Street Fighter 6

The original fighting game rivalry between Capcom and SNK dates back over 30 years now though the companies are on much friendlier terms compared to those early arcade days.

With Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui joining Street Fighter 6 as the series’ first guest characters, one of the SNK leaders voiced his hope to work with Capcom more in the future too.

Longtime SNK Producer Yasuyuki Oda was recently interviewed by Push Square for the upcoming Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves where he was directly asked about the collaboration and their relationship with Capcom.

We’d previously heard quite a bit about the crossover from Street Fighter Director Takayuki Nakayama and Producer Shuhei Matsumoto, but not so much from the SNK camp’s perspective.

“We’re very good friends with Capcom and the Street Fighter team,” said Oda via Push Square. “We actually started talking about this collaboration about two years ago at EVO. We’re just very happy they were able to announce it on such a big stage, and congratulations to that team.”

When Fatal Fury’s return first had its gameplay revealed, we also asked about their status with Capcom, but they were obviously a lot more coy back then.

He goes on to reveal they’re still meeting up with Capcom staff regularly along with his interest to do more collaborations should Terry and Mai prove to be a success.

“We’re meeting with them quite a bit recently, so if [the SNK characters] continue to be a hit for them, there’ll definitely be more possibilities in the future,” said Oda. “We’re always interested in working with them.”

Previously, Street Fighter’s leads shared much the same sentiment with Terry and Mai seemingly serving as the testing grounds for more possibilities.

They state to be interested in making a new Capcom vs. SNK along with having a Street Fighter crossover for SNK though they claim nothing has been decided on that front yet.

There is speculation that the special character development for The King of Fighters 15 could be tied to Capcom, but it may be better to save that for City of the Wolves at this point.

Both companies share further connections now beyond their geographical location in the Kansai region of Japan.

Oda himself previously left SNK after their original bankruptcy in 2001 to join Dimps alongside other devs from the studio where he worked as a designer for both Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter X Tekken before coming back to SNK for King of Fighters 14.

Nakayama is also very open about his love of classic SNK titles, so there seems to be a lot of respect and comradery between the companies again.

With the recent announcement of the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection on top of Terry and Mai’s SF6 inclusion, there’s renewed hope that the classic Capcom vs. SNK games could finally receive a modern release after more than two decades.

Speaking of those, did you know that one of the Capcom vs. SNK fighters was the first game to offer console crossplay all the way back in 2001?

Terry is scheduled to release in Street Fighter 6 this Fall followed by Mai early next year while SNK is set to make their KOF15 announcement at Evo 2024 next month.

Things have definitely gotten a lot more interesting in the fighting game space lately, especially when it comes to Capcom.