SNK told us how they managed to pull off one of Kenshiro’s most iconic moves without sacrificing their Teen ESRB rating.
Kenshiro is the latest guest character from an anime to make a splash in a mainline fighting game, punching his way into Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves this June.
We got the chance to sit down with producer Shinya Tamaki and director Hayato Konya ahead of his release at Evo 2026, who explained the difficulties they faced in translating Hoktuo No Kenâs comparatively gory fighting style into Fatal Furyâs decidedly less grisly hand-to-hand combat.
Part of this problem necessitated finding a balance between Kenshiroâs status as a Bruce Lee-inspired martial artist and the use of his special technique, the Hokuto Shinken, which sees him press opponentsâ pressure points, causing them to explode seconds later. Itâs arguably the most iconic thing about the show, and despite how bloody it is, itâs something the team wanted to make sure they included in the game.
To fix this, they covered the character model of Kenâs opponents in a dark shadow against a deep red backdrop, where they then explode â but no blood is directly shown, and everything is implied. That doesnât stop it from being any less satisfying, though.
âAs you know, Kenshiroâs main fighting style uses channeling points on his opponents, and typically after he uses them, they explode in three seconds,â Tamaki told us. âIt’s a very striking feature of the show. But he’s also a fighter, and for a fighting game, specifically, we wanted him to showcase both features. We wanted him to be a fighter and be able to use the channeling points as an actual gimmick. But of course, we couldnât have our characters exploding on screen, so we had to balance accordingly and make sure that it’s not too gory, but also have these parts that fans are expecting and want to see properly come to life in the gameplay.â
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