Garou: Mark of the Wolves (ported to the U.S. Dreamcast as Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves) is more than a decade old, but it remains one of the games I fire up to doubters to prove the viability of 2D gaming. It’s an amazingly beautiful game with large, bright sprites,  and sparkly special attacks that are animated with old school SNK’s loving care. But Garou: Mark of the Wolves isn’t mere eye-candy; it’s a deep, technical game that will keep fight fans returning fot “just one more match.” It’s easily one of the best 2D fighting games ever crafted.

Over the years, Garou: Mark of the Wolves has been knocked for simply being SNK’s Street Fighter III (and it is without a doubt heavily inspired by Capcom’s classic game), but that’s not necessarily a negative. SNK went to the drawing board and totally deconstructed and reconstructed Fatal Fury‘s visuals and gameplay to take the series to the next level.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves strips the Fatal Fury franchise of all its familiar faces, save for Terry Bogard and Rock Howard. Although the names are new, many are echoes of classic Fatal Fury characters, so you’ll find one that you can bind with quite easily.

• Kevin Rain: Second South Town super cop
• Bonne Jenet: Hot, female pirate in a skimpy purple dress (go figure)
• Kim Dong Hwan: Kim Kaphwan’s son
• Kim Jae Hoon: Kim Kaphwan’s other son
• Gato: Hard-hitting mysterious lone
• Hotaru Futaba: Young, annoying girl; Garou‘s Athena
• Hokutomaru: Andy Bogard’s student
• Khushnood Butt/Marco Rodriguez: Ryo Sakazaki’s student
• Tizoc: The Zangief of Garou
• Freeman: Badassmofo with Iori-like attack
• Grant: Sub-boss
• Kain R. Heinlein: Main boss, and Rock Howard’s uncle

Garou: Mark of Wolves’ gameplay is the most Capcom that SNK had ever gone until King of Fighters XII. Combos flow openly and freely using familiar QCF, HCF and charge moves. If you’re a Street Fighter fan who’s never delved into SNK’s catalog, Garou: Mark of the Wolves is an excellent place to begin.

One of the coolest aspects of Street Fighter III was its “Parry”technique, that let a player block without taking special move/guard damage by pushing forward on the joystick as a blow was about to land. Parrying was a genius addition to Street Fighter III‘s silky smooth gameplay as it introduced a risk-reward scenario: if you weren’t especially adept at it, you ate a fist, foot, or fireball.

Naturally, as SNK was heavily inspired by Street Fighter III, Garou: Mark of the Wolves has its own special blocking technique entitled “Just Defend,” which rewards players with excellent last second blocking skill by filling a characters lifebar a bit. It’s a handy tool if you’re low on life and an opponent is working overtime to end the match with chip damage, but unlike Street Fighter III, there’s no major drawback for blowing a Just Defend, as you pull back on the stick to activate it. That’s right, Just Defend is a super block executed in the same manner as a regular block that offers no risk-reward; it’s a turtlers wet, sloppy dream. A successful Just Defend also lets you guard cancel into an attack.

But that isn’t the only strategic element to Garou: Mark of the Wolves. The TOP system will keep this title tournament-worthy for quite some time. TOP is represented by a bracket that you can position at the front, middle, or end of the lifebar. Once a character’s lifebar enters the TOP zone,  s/he will begin to recover energy, and gain new/more powerful attacks that can quickly guard crush blocking opponents.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves‘ wonderfully animated sprites get plenty of attention, but the backgrounds are just as delicious. Terry’s freight-train stage and Gato’s waterfall stage showcase two of the most detailed, eye-catching backgrounds in fighters, the quality of which wouldn’t be matched until King of Fighters XII. The music isn’t particularly classic, but they don’t offend, either.

The one legit gripe that anyone can have against Garou: Mark of the Wolves is its small roster; it isn’t nearly as sprawling as other fighters like King of Fighters ’98: Ultimate Match. Still, it’s a premier title in its genre, and is one of the many reasons to own a Dreamcast – - or an Xbox for a XBLA download. This is one of SNK’s finest moments.

Jeffrey L. Wilson  (703 Posts)

Founder and Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey L. Wilson’s love of all things shiny/digital has lead to jobs penning gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for E-Gear, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, PC Magazine, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. Besides overseeing the editorial content at 2D-X.com, the Brooklyn College grad hosts New York City’s monthly Bits and Bytes video game media and public relations meetup. You can find him at a bar sampling foreign beers, or on Twitter doing twittery things.