Page 1 - Intro/Character Roster
Page 2 - Fatal Fury
Page 3 - Fatal Fury 2
Page 4 - Fatal Fury Special
Page 5 - Fatal Fury 3
Page 6 - Real Bout Fatal Fury
Page 7 - Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
Page 8 - Real Bout Dominated Mind
Page 9 - Real Bout Fatal Fury Special 2 / First Contact
Page 10 - Wild Ambition
Page 11 - Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Page 12 - Anime

Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters / Garou Densetsu: Shukumei no Tatakai - Neo Geo / Neo Geo CD / Genesis / SNES / Playstation 2 / X68000 (1991)

American Neo Geo Cover

Japanese Neo Geo Cover

European Mega Drive Cover

While often inaccurately perceived as a Street Fighter II clone, Fatal Fury (known as "Garou Densetsu: Shukumei no Tatakai, or "Legend of the Hungry Wolves: The Fated Battle) was actually in development at the same time as SFII. So their similarities are the result of their being different reinterpretations of gameplay that existed in the genre prior to SFII, and not because Fatal Fury was a SFII cash in. Several years prior to the events of the game, two young men named Geese Howard and Jeff Bogard were being trained by a martial arts master named Tung Fu Rue in the American west coast city of Southtown. Geese intended to exploit his teachings to gain influence over Southtown's criminal element, which Tung Fu Rue did not approve of, despite continuing to teach Geese anyway. When Tung decided to make Jeff his successor Geese developed resentment toward both men, and after becoming Southtown police commissioner, he killed Jeff. This event was witnessed by one of Jeff Bogard's children, Terry. Tung Fu Rue would take in Terry and raise him, while the other Bogard brother, Andy, was sent to Japan to learn martial arts from Hanzo Shiranui. Years later, the two brothers enter Geese's King of Fighters tournament with the goal of confronting Geese himself to avenge their father's death. You can only select from the two Bogard brothers and their friend Joe Higashi, with every other character being a non-playable boss character. You choose your first opponent from any of four bosses. After these four are defeated, you move on to fight a few other bosses, which ends with fights against Billy Kane and Geese Howard, in that order. If this reminds you of the first Street Fighter, then that was obviously what SNK was going for. Yes, this is a pretty small character selection, but each character is excellently designed with their own individual feel and a large number of moves. The controls are very simple, with A for punches, B for kicks, and C for throws. The game's physics are relatively intuitive, but the joystick motions for specials are a bit awkward, with too many diagonals for their own good. This is debatably the worst thing about the game, but, as opposed to the original Street Fighter, you can get the moves right every time if you just pay attention to what you're doing, so the game still stands up pretty well. The original Fatal Fury is probably most associated with having introduced a line switching system where fights can move between the background and foreground. During play, the CPU will often jump into the background and if you push any attack button you will jump at them and attack. You can't just switch planes whenever you like, but certain moves will knock you or your opponent to the other plane. This is more of a novelty than anything else, but it is interesting and it does set it apart from other fighters. A few levels merely have a lone plane. In these levels if you hit you opponent with an attack that would normally knock them to the other plane, they will instead collide with some kind of obstacle in the background and bounce off of it and land back on the ground in the foreground. This plane switching system was expanded upon to make it much more beneficial in the sequels. There is also a very odd attack chaining system in Fatal Fury. Your basic normals are called Base attacks. If your perform two consecutive Base attacks from the same range without them being blocked, and then follow it with a third normal from the same range, then this normal will become a Alternate attack. This is pretty much the same thing, but with a different animation. If this attacks hits, then the next normal will be a Base attack with a slightly different animation. If you keep attacking than the moves will alternate between Bases and Alternates and will keep going as long as each attack lands. Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters is essentially what the original Street Fighter should have been. It takes the same ultra-simplistic-yet-relatively-modern gameplay, but actually executes it well enough for the game to be legitimately good. The best thing about the game though, and what really makes it stand out from any other fighter, is that somebody at SNK had the absolutely fantastic idea to give it a two player co-operative mode. This means that two players can team up to fight against a CPU controlled opponent at the same time. During these co-operative matches, it plays the same as it normally does. It also makes defeating bosses easy by simply surrounding them, because they can't block from both sides at the same time. Co-operative mode is definitely the main draw of the game, and why this did not become more popular in the genre and appear in more games, I have no clue. Regardless, it really is an awesome idea and it definitely makes Fatal Fury worth playing if only to play this mode with a second player. After each co-operative fight against a boss, you will fight your teammate and the winner will continue. This is no problem if you are playing a port of the game, but in the arcade it means that you have to put in quite a few quarters to play through the entire game in co-operative mode. Fatal Fury also does an amazing job of fleshing out Geese Howard, whose legacy lasts through the entire series. Compared to Sagat or M. Bison of the Street Fighter games, who simply show up at the end and fight, Geese is constantly watching your progress and makes comments after every match. If you beat him (since this is an SNK game, he's a tough bastard), you send him flying off the top of his tower, though he apparently survives. In an interesting twist, if you lose during the Geese fight, you get a special continue countdown screen with your character falling towards the ground. Compared to its successors, Fatal Fury's graphics aren't that spectacular, and its music doesn't even begin to compare to later SNK fighters, but both elements stand up relatively well. Its background designs are easily among the best in any fighter at the time of its release. Hwa Jai's level is set in Southtown's streets with a deep view of the city in the background. Geese's level is set at the top of Geese Tower with the sky visible through the ceiling in the background. The details throughout the game in general are pretty great, and will change very slightly each round as the game progresses to later periods of the day. The rain in Tung Fu Rue's level, the two level carousel in Raiden's level, the trains in Duck King's level, and the odd references painted on cars in Billy Kane's level are all among the best details in the game. There are also a few bonus levels where you play an arcade arm wrestling game against a digital opponents. Pretty odd. The music generally is only okay, except for the introduction of Geese's legendary theme. Also, the player vs. player music is taken from Street Smart, an earlier fighting game from SNK. Fatal Fury was popular enough in the arcades to get ported to SNES and Genesis, which was handled by Takara, who did many of SNK's home ports. Their controls are not quite as good as the arcade version, and the graphics and music obviously aren't up to the same level. The arm wrestling bonus games have been replaced with more typical Street Fighter II games too. However, in some respects these two 16-bit ports might actually be the best versions of the game, because they solve the biggest problem of the arcade version - every character in the game playable in two player mode. However, the Genesis version lacks Billy Kane and Hwa Jai completely. Years, later it was ported to PlayStation 2 as part of Garou Densetsu/Fatal Fury Battle Archives 1. All of ports on these versions are practically arcade perfect. A brand new arranged soundtrack was made for this version, since there was never a full arrange soundtrack for this game, The Neo CD version simply uses recordings from the arcade game. MP3s Download here Taking on the Ocean - Michael Max A Kiss for Geese - Geese Howard

Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo) Fatal Fury (Neo Geo)

Comparison Screenshots

Arcade	SNES	Genesis

Geese Quotes