Garou: Mark of the Wolves

From SNK Wiki

Garou: Mark of the Wolves cover art. Illustration done by TONKO.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves (餓狼 MARK OF THE WOLVES, Garō Māku obu za Uruvusu); and sometimes abbreviated Garou, Mark of the Wolves or MOW; is a 1999 fighting game produced by SNK, originally for the Neo Geo system. It is the ninth and final game in the Fatal Fury series, set ten years after the death of Geese Howard in Real Bout Fatal Fury. It is known for pushing the graphical capabilities of the Neo Geo as well as its well-balanced roster of characters and highly technical gameplay.

As part of SNK's celebration of the series's 15 year anniversary, a retrospective movie was made to take place in the same time frame.

[edit] Overview

The game is known for pushing the capabilities of the Neo-Geo to their limits. While the Neo Geo is completely incapable of rendering 3D graphics and semi-transparency, the game uses some of the most advanced strictly 2D graphical techniques to give the illusion that both are taking place.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves general gameplay mechanics and art style are changed to more closely resemble SNK's The King of Fighters series than the Fatal Fury series. The exclusion of pseudo-3D sidestepping, button layout, music, and the collision detection are all factors that are more styled like the King of Fighters than Fatal Fury.

Just as the Fatal Fury series has many parallels with Capcom's Street Fighter series, Garou: Mark of the Wolves parallels Street Fighter III in many ways. Both games were released around the same time in the late 1990's, just as the fighting game craze of the decade was cooling down. Garou: Mark of the Wolves takes place a full generation after the rest of the Fatal Fury series, discarding nearly all of the recurring characters in favor of new ones, as well as introducing a system of "just defending" (similar to SFIII "parrying" in that attacks are negated by performing a special block at the last split-second). Moreover, while Garou and SFIII characters have crossed over into other games, both games have not had true sequels produced for nearly a decade.

The game's sequel, tentatively titled Garou: Mark of the Wolves 2, was reported to be in the works on the Neo Geo system several times by Korean news sources. Since 2002, the project has been put on hold and its current status remains unknown. According to Falcoon at the 2005 KOF Party, the game's sequel was around 70% percent complete by the old SNK team. Ureshino reported that a new grappler character and Joe's apprentice were added to the roster.