Yuri was initially designed as a weak damsel in distress who would become one of SNK's first female fighters following a positive response from Mai Shiranui in their related IP Fatal Fury.

Yuri was created by the SNK member woman spoiled by her older brother Ryo Sakazaki who has to rescue her in the first Art of Fighting video game.

[1] SNK developer Yasuyuki Oda reflected that both Art of Fighting and the other IP Fatal Fury seemed to appeal to fans of male-oriented series like Fist of the North Star and Dragon Ball.

With Mai's high popularity in Fatal Fury, SNK decided to include Yuri in Art of Fighting 2 as a playable character which received similar response.

[4] Additionally, the Art of Fighting staff wanted Yuri to appear in the game, thus, she was added to the Women Fighters Team as the leader.

[5] Once it was announced Yuri would be a playable character in Art of Fighting 2, the staff behind The King of Fighters '94 wanted her to be part of the cast.

[8] This was done by director Toyohisa Tanabe as he believed Capcom was ahead of their company when creating the Ryo's parody character Dan Hibiki in Street Fighter Alpha.

Tanabe decided to make Yuri a strong character despite her background, and often borrow techniques from Capcom fighting games out of respect and a fast fashion.

[9] The King of Fighters writer Akihiko Ureshino describes Yuri as a "the greatest genius," probably because, although she was originally a girl who was good at sports, it only took her one year to master the secret techniques of her father after she started to train in karate seriously.

[12] In KOF: Maximum Impact 2, some of her extra normal outfits make her look like fellow Kyokugen practitioners; color scheme B makes her look like Ryo (blond hair, orange gi and black tights), while scheme F resembles Robert Garcia's outfit from The King of Fighters '99 to 2002, which consists of brown hair, orange gi with black long-sleeved tights, and no headband.

Due to the skill required to perform some of her special attacks, Yamamoto feels Yuri's players to train themselves in order to use her properly.

There was originally an attempt to give the character one of Robert Garcia's moves because of both of them handling their lower limbs, but was removed due to not fitting Yuri.

Yuri's redesign gave the staff a good impression of how her sprites changed, especially liking the universal lower body due to her combination of white gi and blue pants.

[20] In Art of Fighting 3, Yuri is once again unplayable, but she appears along with Ryo searching for Robert, who was helping a childhood friend known as Freya Lawrence.

[48] Yuri appears in various SNK manga and in the Art of Fighting anime adaptation which retells the story from the first game but with Mr. Big wanting to obtain a diamond that Ryo and Robert found.

[57] In an Art of Fighting commercial, Yuri was portrayed by her own voice actress Ayumi Hamasaki whom the writer praised for keeping in-character during the entire video.

[63] Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek described her as adding to her family's "wonderful comedic existence", but felt she was more at place there than in King of Fighters as part of the Women's Team.

He added "She's not quite Sakura and she's not quite Dan Hibiki, but she's fine for what she is," and praised her departure from a damsel in distress to a full character as the games progressed.

The Kyokugenryu the cast uses in Art of Fighting instead comes across as a fantasy version of the "knockout" Kyokushinkaikan created by Mas Oyama who serves as an influence for both Ryu's and Yuri's characters.

[68] Geek.com considered this a "game wars" as the two companies kept referencing each other since the creation of Street Fighter and Art of Fighting and the latter characters felt like jokes in general from each side.

[71][72][73] VG247 praised her addition to The King of Fighters XV thanks to her appealing fighting style involving notable impact which earned her the nickname of "Wild Flying Swallow" and also liked her upbeat personality.

[75] GeneracionXbox noted that while Yuri employs the same fighting style as Ryo and Robert, she provides her own diversed form while her trailer for KOFXV appealed to Fatal Fury fans for putting her in the same stage as Richard Meyer from the same series.