Al-Masmak Palace, one of the most important landmarks of the old city, in Riyadh, has taken the world famous game: King of Fighters by storm, as one of the squares of the game was named after the arena of the city of Riyadh. It was designed, by Saudi girl Mashael Al-Barrak, according to the style of the historic Palace of Al-Masmak, on the backdrop of the modern buildings and towers, in the nowadays robust and modern city of Riyadh. The step took place, following Manga for Production, an affiliate of the Foundation of Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz "Misk Charity", inserting of the character of "Saudi Najd" in the game "King of Fighters", in collaboration with SNK, the Japanese company. At the time of putting the character at avail, at PlayStation stores and on computers, worldwide, Riyadh Square has been included among officially professional gaming grounds. Since, Najd has managed to achieve global interaction with media coverage, in more than 50 news sites, in nine different languages, meanwhile related tweets hailing the character have reached about 1600 around the world, as it managed to appear before eight and a half million people. The story of Najd's character and the open-air arena, in Riyadh, dates back to last September, when Manga Productions launched a social networking contest to design a skilled martial arts character. It was selected from among 300 designs from Saudi Arabia, UAE, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Sultanate of Oman, the Republic of Iraq and other Arab countries, and won Mashael Al-Barrak, who drew a character that was admired by the King of Fighters' director Oda Yasuyuki for the idea of the character as well as unique design. Manga Productions co- signed an investment agreement with SNK last year, during the MESC Global Forum, in the presence of Manga Productions Chairman Bader Al-Askar and Chairman of SNKJ Lihue. On the other hand, the Chief Executive Officer of Manga Production Dr. Issam Bukhari pointed out that the company seeks to enrich Arab content and to deliver Saudi culturally-loaded messages to the world, through developing and backing up local capabilities and talents, via taking advantage of the world standard experience and technologies, in the animation industry and video games, in order to indigenize them, later on, to the benefit of the society. Perhaps the most significant indicators of the Najd appeal to the public, the widespread drawings shown by admirers of the character, from all over the world, as it could be considered as the first Saudi character of its kind securing such appeal to video games' fans, whose numbers have exceeded 17 billion users, in 2017. King of Fighters is one of the official games in the AFC and during upcoming events are scheduled to be held, in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Manga Productions, for its part, will announce training programs for Saudi youths next summer, at SNK, in collaboration with Misk initiatives.
