According to Neo Geo Freak, a popular Neo Geo magazine, Blue Mary's character design was based on Android 18 from the Dragon Ball series.

In a Neo Geo Freak Magazine interview, the SNK team originally wanted to replace 'Mai Shiranui' with a new female character named 'Alice Chrysler', but they gave in to fan demands and brought back Mai.

According to a 1995 SNK team interview in Neo Geo Freak Magazine, Sokaku Mochizuki was originally going to be a young karate practitioner, but the team wanted a character with more oomph and impact, so they decided to make him similar to a komusou (mendicant) monk, and intentionally designed the character's personality to be markedly darker compared to the rest of the game's upbeat and positive roster.

In a 1995 interview with the SNK team published in Neo Geo Freak Magazine, they were asked about why several older characters had their previous special moves (i.e. Terry Bogard's Rising Tackle Joe Higashi's Bakuretsuken) removed in exchanged for new moves. The SNK team responded:

"We took out Terry’s Rising Tackle because we wanted to add a new move for him, Power Dunk. Rising Tackle resembled Power Dunk a little too closely, and it would have diluted Power Dunk’s impact as a new move. For Joe’s Bakuretsuken, we cut it because wanted to put a stronger emphasis on his short-range rush attacks and combos."

According to the SNK team in a 1995 Neo Geo Freak Magazine interview, Franco Bash's fighting style of kickboxing was implemented into the game after Joe Higashi, noted by fighting using kickboxing's "rival" style Muay Thai, had his storyline shift away from being one of the main focuses of the series, upon which the SNK team decided that there was enough room for another kick-centered fighting style.

In a 1995 interview with the SNK Sound Team published in Neo Geo Freak Magazine, composers Shimizm and Konny stated that the team wanted to change up the patterns and image of each song, as they had to compose a large number of songs for each game they worked on while also adding something new into the image of earlier versions of songs and also relating to what the game was trying to express. By doing this, they set up a distinct identity for each game, always searching to make things more "real":