Garou: Mark of the Wolves
SNK Play­more, 1999

Leav­ing an indeli­ble mark

SNK is still around doing things in this mod­ern fight­ing game land­scape. Their lat­est release, Garou: City of the Wolves, is a cer­ti­fied banger and is get­ting a lot of play in the crit­ic sphere because the orig­i­nal is so beloved. And that’s one of the best things Mark of the Wolves man­aged to do: Leave a good lega­cy and stay rel­e­vant 25 years later.
Mark of the Wolves does a lot of things with the Fatal Fury name for the sake of progress. Tak­ing place 10 years after the death of crime lord Geese Howard dur­ing the King of Fight­ers Tour­na­ment as depict­ed in Real Bout Fatal Fury, Mark intro­duces a new cast with Ter­ry Bog­a­rd return­ing to the fray to lead the charge. Ter­ry takes the young Rock Howard, Geese’s scion, under his wing to fight for South Town and jus­tice in gen­er­al. But the specter of Geese haunts them. And there is a new vil­lain in the mix, Kain, to take Geese’s place and up the stakes. The plot is inter­est­ing and engag­ing. Get­ting used to a whole new cast minus Ter­ry takes a minute and learn­ing their back­ground and moti­va­tion is fun.

The char­ac­ter designs are cool, as they are in most SNK games. The sprites look great and are large and detailed. The back­grounds, while col­or­ful, aren’t near­ly as detailed, though there are a lot of ani­ma­tions going on that make them live­ly. Over­all, the look isn’t too dif­fer­ent than what you’d expect from an SNK arcade game, but the Dream­cast does give it a lit­tle boost. 

The sound­track is a lit­tle gener­ic, which is sur­pris­ing because I was expect­ing some nice tracks. I’m spoiled by the often-maligned SvC Chaos, which had a great sound­track despite the sur­round­ing mess, because it was released in the same era by SNK. How­ev­er, despite the gener­ic under­tones, the sound­track does­n’t deter the sur­round­ing over­all product.

And the sur­round­ing prod­uct, game­play-wise, is fine. New mechan­ics, like the Tac­ti­cal Offense Posi­tion and Just Defend, are wel­come new pieces in the series’ reper­toire. Just Defend, which is like Street Fight­er III’s par­ry mechan­ic, has hung around and made appear­ances in oth­er games such as Cap­com vs. SNK 2’s K‑Groove so I’d say it’s a good addi­tion 25 years lat­er. And with the new mechan­ics, the game plays well, too. If I could pick it up and play it with lit­tle expo­sure to SNK’s style of fight­ing and do well, it’s safe to say that Mark has a good feel. That feel is present in the var­ied modes, with Sur­vival as the most fun out of all offered.

Mark is a great fight­ing game and still holds up well. It has the attrac­tion of ear­ly 2000s fight­ing game finesse, and it serves as a good intro­duc­tion to the world of SNK if you’re not well-versed in the series. A well-round­ed fight­ing game with strong mechan­ics and good envi­ron­ment are the marks of a future legend.