SNK's Fatal Fury fighting series reaches its 7th episode bringing a lot of "innovations" and some significant changes, starting from characters: all the 20 fighters from previous games return with new artworks and battle stages completely redrawn, as well as some remodelled (or new) moves.

The traditional fighting system comes with sensible modifications, like the removal of both "Rank System" (SSS, SS, S, AAA etc.) and ground breakable objects. The match system using 2 battle plans (foreground/background) remains semi-intact, because now some battle fields (like Cheng Sinzan's stage) uses a single plane, forcing the players to use only the basic defense to avoid attacks.

But the main addition of this title (and the reason for subtitle "The Newcomers") are 2 new characters entering for Fatal Fury's main cast: Rick Strowd, a mysterious fighter with a particular fighting style and Li Xiangfei, a young female Chinese martial arts fighter.