Kenji Matsubara is a longtime executive in the video game industry, working in companies like Tecmo, Zynga, and Sega, before joining SNK to become its president in 2021. This was a year before SNK announced they were making a Fatal Fury game in EVO. While SNK talked about making a new Fatal Fury since 2005, it's clear that Matsubara had a lot of input in the game's direction.