It was since reborn a third time, when they returned to console games after focusing on pachinko and mobile games for years in 2016. The second form of SNK reopened in 2003 with different staffers, as several old ones had been split between several different companies like Capcom and Dimps. The King of Fighters 2000 released afterward, yes, but was rushed to the market in the company’s final moments. Garou has a remarkable place in history thanks to being the last big hurrah from the original SNK, even though it wasn’t the last game from them per se. It was, however, easier to learn than several other late 90s titles, especially those of the tag team variety.
Garou wasn’t quite as difficult to get into as the SFIII games, though learning, let alone mastering, features like Just Defend and Kara cancelling were necessary for high-level play. The core game was fun to play for anyone who didn’t play it competitively. Every character is viable - including Freeman, despite being the weakest of the bunch. While some characters were better than others in terms of competitiveness, the game was remarkably well balanced for a late 90s fighting game. The closest character here was Kim Jae Hoon, but even he wasn’t completely identical to his father. This included the aforementioned characters who were successors to earlier Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting faces (both franchises occur in the same universe). Garou’s characters contained unique move sets to ensure that every character was distinguishable from the other. It was later topped by The King of Fighters XII and XIII, but Garou nonetheless remains delightful to observe in motion for anyone who likes sprites to this day. It didn’t look quite as good in motion as the SFIII games, but few games do. With Garou, SNK pushed their old Neo Geo arcade board technology to its fullest potential to make one of the best-looking sprite-based fighting games of the era. The beautiful sprites also helped the characters stick out. Fatal Fury fans liked this game’s cast more than Street Fighter fans liked SFIII’s, at least initially. Each character has a distinct personality to distinguish them from their predecessors, though the characters not inspired by legacy characters like Gato and Kevin Rian also stood out. Kim Jae Hoon and Kim Dong Hwan are the sons of Kim Kaphwan.
Kushnood Butt (Marco Rodriguez in the Japanese version) learned Kyokugen Karate, likely from an older Ryo Sakazaki/Mr. Rock Howard is the foster child of Terry, but the actual son of franchise villain Geese Howard. Several then-new faces were related to characters from previous games. Like the Street Fighter III titles, Garou pushed aside nearly all the fan favorite characters from previous Fatal Fury titles in favor of new ones, with Terry Bogard being the only returning character. (The game was released as Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves for Dreamcast in North America, but it’s referred to as Garou: Mark of the Wolves everywhere else.) SNK had their own response to this with a brand-new installment in their then-longest-running franchise: Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Its progeny brought back literally a few more familiar faces, while still having casts that largely consisted of new characters. Capcom took a big risk with Street Fighter III: New Generation, which got rid of several fan-favorite characters in lieu of new faces outside of Ryu and Ken, and contained some of the prettiest animated sprites in video game history. This rivalry got extremely friendly when Capcom created a character that clearly referenced several SNK characters with Dan Hibiki. It continued from there, when Capcom released further Street Fighter games along with the Darkstalkersand Marvel titles and crossovers, while SNK released more Fatal Fury games and started franchises like Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting, World Heroes, and The King of Fighters (separate from the Fatal Fury series). The fighting game genre was kickstarted thanks to Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury: King of Fighters, the latter of which was notably in development before the former was announced and released. (The fight between Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat was a close second, but that was primarily in America, and Europe to a lesser extent.) The biggest was the friendly battle between Capcom and SNK. There were several memorable fighting game company rivalries in the 90s, the era in which the genre rose to prominence.
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