SNK (which is far from what it was in the 1990s; it’s now a Saudi Arabian-owned company) has announced two projects, but we haven’t heard much information about them yet.

SNK’s Joshua Weatherford confirmed during a panel at EVO 2024 (about The King of Fighters XV and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves) that new games are in the company’s future. They have a lot of projects, and there are many that he can’t talk about, but there are a few that are at an advanced stage, and they would need new staff for those.

“One that got a lot of press here [at EVO] is that we announced that we’re doing a new Art of Fighting. So you’re going to see South Town in all its ’70s glory brawling again. And also, one of the projects that I’m in charge of that we mentioned at the same time is a Samurai Shodown action RPG. Look forward to that, we have a lot of surprises in store for that. And if you’re a fan of these franchises and you’re looking for a job in development, send in your applications, we need more people to help us make these great games. I definitely need more people on this team,” Weatherford said.

But there is already an example of a Samurai Shodown RPG. Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits Bushidō Retsuden was released in June 1997 (the series is called Samurai Spirits in Japan) and expanded on the story of the first two episodes. It was originally released on SNK’s Neo Geo CD, but a little over a year later (July 1998) the game was ported to the SEGA Saturn and PlayStation with the subtitle “Relaunched”. There was no western release. The first Art of Fighting was released in 1992, the second two years later, and the third two years after that.

So both projects date back to the mid-90s. We look forward to hearing more details.

Source: Gematsu