Hiya!

When Salvatore Ganacci was announced to be one of the characters for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, everyone in the fighting game community, including myself, was incredibly upset. This seemed like a slap in the face by SNK to Fatal Fury fans. They already are putting in Cristiano Ronaldo in City of the Wolves! Why would SNK add another real-life person, someone a lot of people haven’t heard of, in the roster? They could’ve added other legacy characters like Freeman, Blue Mary, Yamazaki or Duck King, who is already Fatal Fury’s resident DJ. I was so upset I even wrote a parody post of other real people SNK may as well add to the game since they’re just ignoring fan favorite characters.

Well, a lot has changed since that time. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has just been released to pretty good reviews and I have played it. Even before then, I already knew I had to, on behalf of the entire fighting game community, issue an apology to one Salvatore Ganacci. After some time with the game and seeing what the pros can do with you, I do believe you’ve earned your spot in City of the Wolves.

First off, I will try to defend my initial reaction to seeing Salvatore Ganacci. You have to understand the fighting game community has gotten a little bit sick of seeing the involvement of celebrities in fighting games. This is especially annoying when these celebrities don’t know a lot about fighting games. You had Megan Fox‘s awful voiceover work as Nitara in the new Mortal Kombat 1. You have Dmitri Vegas cosplaying as Sub-Zero in that same game. There was also the time they got Ronda Rousey to do the voice of Sonya Blade. In hindsight, a lot of this brouhaha is because of Mortal Kombat but you get the idea.

It also felt like Salvatore Ganacci’s inclusion wasn’t decided because the people at SNK really wanted this DJ in the game. No, what it felt like was the new owner of SNK who chose to add him to City of the Wolves. This was contrary to what was said before in that he wouldn’t really get involved with SNK’s development process. Well, I can’t really see why SNK would want to put international futbol star Cristiano Ronaldo into the game in the first place. Why would SNK put in Salvatore Ganacci when they could just, like I said before, use Duck King instead? This just reeked of interference.

Now, whether or not SNK was forced to add these characters, they did make the most of it. With that in mind, they did a masterful job with Salvatore Ganacci. That isn’t because he’s a super top tier character, however. That has yet to be determined as more tech comes out. No, what makes Salvatore Ganacci a great addition to City of the Wolves is he’s just full of personality! SNK worked their butts off to make him ooze quirkiness and uniqueness!

For one, Salvatore Ganacci’s animations cycles are fantastic. He has a lot of idle animations which are just super quirky. A lot of his moves also has some funny recovery animations. Here’s the thing: you will probably never see these animations in a high-level match as they’re superfluous. You can simply cancel out of them by walking forward or backward. So, SNK purposefully worked on putting in these glorious movement patterns knowing full well a lot of fighting game fans will never see them! That’s a lot of dedication. Even so, his regular standing and crouching animations are cool as you can clearly see Salvatore grooving to the beats in his head.

They also designed him right as, in essence, Salvatore is a joke character… but a very effective joke character. His normal attacks are very unorthodox. A good example is his down and heavy kick. It works like a sweep… but at the same time, it’s also a really good anti-air? It’s because, while he does his split kick to take out his opponent’s legs, Salvatore raises his hands upward and that becomes an upwards angle attack! That’s just an example of his already strange movelist.

He’s also a stance character and, immediately, that eliminates him from becoming my main character. However, I do see his stance moves are going to be effective in the right hands. There are just so many combinations and mixups to the several stances he has and I’m guessing pros are going to labbing these to optimize Salvatore’s damage output. That’s definitely above my paygrade and I just know I’ll be eating a lot of these attacks when I face off against him online.

Even if that is the case, I don’t think Salvatore is actually top tier. That was one of my major fears as, when it comes to real people, egos might get involved. When the guy also has the backing of the owner of SNK, then the chances of him becoming too powerful goes up. That doesn’t seem to the case. He is a super technical fighter because of all of his stances but, like with a lot of fighting games, in the right hands, he looks like he could be a problem.

The really funny thing is most of his moves in City of the Wolves are references to his videos! Yes, as weird and otherworldly his animations are, they are all things Salvatore Ganacci has done in his music videos. Okay, a lot of them were done with the help of movie magic and special effects. I mean, I don’t think he can really slide on the ground like in Step Grandma or swim through the air like he did in Your Mother… can he? I mean… nah! No way Salvatore can do that in real life… but maybe? Nah!

If you’re wondering how come I know about those videos when I, like a lot in the fighting game community, have never heard of Salvatore Ganacci, that’s because I did look him up. I didn’t when he was first revealed because I was too busy stewing in my hate for the guy. After seeing his moves and how goofy he was, I just had to see what this guy was all about. Color me fascinated but, after watching just a few of his music videos, I got hooked! His music is indeed something to groove to. However, what’s even more impressive to me is his sense of humor. There’s a self-depreciating kind of humor to all of his videos. It feels kind of abstract and random but you get just enough to make you laugh. It’s kind of like watching a Mr. Bean skit. Despite there being little to no dialogue spoken, you still get enough of the message to laugh. There’s a level of brilliance to that that difficult to quantify!

So, on behalf of the entire fighting game community, I would like to issue a formal apology to Salvatore Ganacci. You got a lot of hate from us and that’s on us. We judge you before we even got to know you. While I know some will begrudgingly admitting SNK did a great job with your character in Fatal Fury, I am not one of those people. I do wholeheartedly accept you as a Fatal Fury character as it was done with good intentions in mind.

Ronaldo still sucks, though.

Byee!

Have you tried out Salvatore Ganacci in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves? What’s your take on him now? Let me know in the comments section below!