Well, there is *one* country where he's quite popular.
Fighting games are no stranger to an odd crossover: Bandai Namco put Final Fantasy 15’s Noctis in Tekken 7, Mortal Kombat 11 had the Terminator, and Dead or Alive 4 even made an entire new Halo character called SPARTAN-458, someone who is canon in neither game’s universe.
But hey, what about a semi-niche Bosnian-Swedish DJ? Well, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves developer SNK is doing just that after it announced that Salvatore Ganacci was coming to the game as a playable character. Alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, lest we forget.
If, like me, you weren’t entirely sure who this man is, I regret to inform you that the reveal trailer does not do much to help that. In fact, it might be one of the most bizarre trailers I’ve witnessed in recent videogame years, which is saying something.
It starts in a classroom as a teacher asks each student what they want to be when they grow up, with a young Salvatore Ganacci chiming in to say “I want to be in a videogame.” Of course, the children laugh at him, as kids do, so what does he do? Well, he goes home and blows into an old cartridge, releasing dust which materialises into the shape of… a pot-bellied genie wearing a wife beater. I don’t know either.
The genie grants Ganacci’s wish and we get all but a three-second glimpse of his in-game persona before the trailer ends. It’s, uh, a real fever dream. Ganacci is also handling the original score for City of the Wolves alongside 11 other DJs, which makes a little more sense than his inclusion as a literal punchin’ and kickin’ fighter.
The pieces of the puzzle do start to fall into place when you consider who’s actually pulling the strings at SNK these days: It’s almost wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who in less fun news was accused of ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Saudi Arabia’s been making a concerted effort to dump all kinds of money into videogames and esports in the last several years—it hosted a massive esports tournament last summer with games like Tekken 8 getting record-breaking million-dollar prize pools, something practically unheard of in the FGC. But it did also drum up a lot of discussion around sportswashing, and even criticism from within the FGC at taking away from its grassroots origins and concerns around protecting queer spaces within the community.
Anyway, Ganacci seems to be a relatively popular figure with Saudi’s royal family: He regularly tours across the country and seems to guest at a host of music festivals and golf tournaments. So hey, starting to make sense, right?
I’m not entirely sure that putting someone who’s a fairly no-name DJ outside of one country into an old legacy fighting game is exactly the correct play here, but I also don’t have Saudi crown prince kinda money, so what do I know?
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is releasing in all its bizarre crossover glory on April 24. I’m looking forward to seeing if there’s a timeline where we’re seeing pros duke it out as a pro footballer and random European DJ, if they end up topping any tier lists.
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