Since SNK owns a lot of IPs that are not in this genre, it will be hard to find out exactly what the collaboration is for.
SNK has announced that they will be working with Arika on an IP that will not be Samurai Shodown, for example. SNK, which is owned by the MISK Foundation (the non-profit company of the Saudi crown prince), has over 200 game properties, including Neo Geo. The company is now working on restoring and revitalizing older IPs, and part of that is working with Arika (they most recently worked on Tekken 8, but have also been involved with Tetris 99, the Street Fighter EX series, Tetris: The Grand Master arcade games, and developed Mega Man Network Transmission, for example).
There are many IPs that could be listed to see what they can bring to modern audiences. Ikari, Psycho Soldier, Time Soldiers, Mechanized Attack, Thrash Rally, Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-a-Move), Windjammers, Ironclad, Metal Slug… and these are just the titles that got an arcade or Neo Geo release. As for fighting games, it’s not clear if we should look at the beat’em up genre or not, because there are several examples that could be successful today (Spinmaster, for example).
We could even mention IPs that have appeared on Nintendo platform(s): Athena, Alpha Mission, Iron Tank, and we won’t mention a golf or baseball game because we don’t see much point in modernizing them. However, due to the fighting genre, Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, The Art of Fighting, The Last Blade, or World Heroes can be excluded, and of these, The King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, and Samurai Shodown are still getting new games on a regular basis for the most part.
We don’t have much information about the collaboration at the moment, and SNK has said to expect more details later.
