Fatal Fury is a long-running SNK 2D fighting game series that dates back to 1991. Garou: Mark of the Wolves was released in 1999, and would serve as the last installment to date.
In the early 90s there were quite a few 2D fighting games, and various SNK fighters attempted to change up the pace. Samurai Shodown introduced weapons, King of Fighters introduced team-mates, and Fatal Fury brought the side-stepping from brawler games into the one-on-one fighting genre. Over the years Fatal Fury had abandoned the two-plane system. Then what makes Garou: Mark of the Wolves so special?
Style.
The game has an impeccable sense of style. While other games mostly retained the same style from the last nine years, this installment pushed the limits of the Neogeo platform. However, one shouldn’t judge a game solely on its appearance. The title is quite a spectacular fighter. The visual stylings of Garou compared to former incarnations is fairly obvious for anyone who tends to notice that sort of thing.
Fatal Fury’s gameplay has always been fairly concrete, but with Mark of the Wolves it becomes absolutely stellar. This game is a blast to play. Other fighting games from the time period such as The Last Blade II, King of Fighters, and Street Fighter III were fun, but none of them had the sparkle that Garou: Mark of the Wolves had. Similar in nature to King of Fighters, when you lose you have the option of affecting gameplay for the next round. There is also a special meter inside your regular health meter which allows for you to do certain special moves. You can pick whether you want that area to be in the front, middle, or end.
Besides some of the new gameplay additions, the game is very fluid all around. Whether it’s the animations, or the overall feel of the gameplay. Quite a few old fighting games seem to have very little replay value compared to modern fighting games, but if you pick the game up for Dreamcast and use a VGA adapter it will look almost as good as King of Fighter XI (except the backgrounds are less 3D as this was originally a Neogeo game)
Mark of the Wolves features almost an entirely new cast of characters in the Fatal Fury universe, but several of them can be seen in modern installments of The King of Fighters.
So if you have a Dreamcast or an import PS2, I highly recommend picking this up. It’s nowhere near as flashy as Guilty Gear, and not as complicated as The King of Fighters can be. This games meets you somewhere in between, and delivers satisfaction when you are craving a good fight.
