SNK are a developer of great pedigree, and although their games in the last few years have been somewhat inconsistent, we’re seeing a bit of a resurgence recently with the popularity of The King of Fighters series, and the upcoming return of Samurai Shodown.
Back in the Dreamcast era, when Capcom were dropping the incredible Street Fighter III series, topped with the near-perfect 3rd Strike, SNK answered with what could be considered one of the best fighting games of all time – Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves.
R1: Round One. FIGHT!
Released in 1999 in Japanese arcades, before hitting the Neo Geo in 2000 and finally (as mentioned above) the Dreamcast in 2001, which was the only port of the game outside of Japan and is more commonly known as Garou: Mark of the Wolves for whatever reason.
The story of the game is set after the death of Geese Howard in a Southtown that has recovered after spending so long under his control. Here, a new King of Fighters tournament has begun, with various characters related to previous fighters taking part – and Terry Bogard.
These include: Rock Howard, son of Geese and protégé of Terry Bogard; Khushnood Butt, a practitioner of karate and pupil of Ryo Sakazaki; and Hokutomaru, a ninja who trained under Andy Bogard. But, there’s also newcomers such as Freeman and B. Jenet to try.
The gameplay is exactly what you would expect with the players core goal being to reduce their opponent’s HP to zero before the time runs out on the rounds. However, Garou does something new and incredibly interesting with this called the T.O.P. system.
Adding a layer of strategy to the fights, the T.O.P. system allows the player to give themselves health recovery, increased attack damage, and the access to T.O.P. only attacks. This can be placed
