The 'King Of Fighters' Series Got Bought By The King Of Bullets

Remember when arcade titles like The King Of Fighters and Samurai Shodown took all of our money because all SNK games featured intentionally unfair bosses? Well, they now have an even harder boss, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Mohammed bin Salman has just acquired 96% of SNK, meaning that he now also legally owns at least 20% of all '90s Arcade kids' memories.

A fun fact about bin Salman is that he goes by the gamer name of “Abu Rasasa”, which translates to “father of the bullet”. A not-so-fun fact about him is that we just lied, and that's not his gamer name, but rather what the people of Saudi Arabia call him for his alleged connections to various assassinations and crimes against humanity. 

While we can't tell if he really cares about playing games since he spends so much time allegedly playing with the lives of actual people, we do know that SNK isn't even the only company now partly owned by him. In recent times, Salman has acquired chunks of various companies, such as Activision Blizzard and EA, meaning that there's a possibility he only acquired SNK to make him look less like someone who only deals with shady people. Officially, getting inside these companies is part of Saudi Vision 2030, something Salman claims is an attempt at driving the economy of Saudi Arabia from depending entirely on oil.

Pesky nonbelievers, however, state that the arcade business actually isn't a very viable alternative to the oil economy, and that this is actually more of a way to make the prince look more palatable to the people who still aren't absolutely terrified of him. We don't know. If there's one thing we gotta give Salman, though, it's how he managed to prove us wrong when we thought that the awfulness of the previous acquisition of SNK by a goddamn pachinko company couldn't be topped.

Top Image: SNK