One of the finest fighting games ever crafted finally receives the excellent Steam release it deserves. Featuring smoother animation and excellent rollback netcode, the updated Garou: Mark of the Wolves should not be overlooked.

The 1990s war between developers Capcom and SNK resulted in some of the finest fighting games ever to grace arcades and home video game consoles. Talent was poached, ideas were borrowed, and shots were fired, but the intense competition pushed both companies, and the genre, to new heights. 1999's Garou: Mark of the Wolves—a surprisingly deep and visually stunning entry in the long-running Fatal Fury series—was birthed from that stiff competition. In 2016, the classic fighter finally appeared on Steam, courtesy of Dotemu, but with animation issues and mediocre delay-based netcode. In 2020, Garou receives the port it deserves. Code Mystics took over the development duties from Dotemu and fixed the animation frame drops and, more importantly, the netcode. Garou is now a PC game that surpasses the original in every way.

Note: If you've already purchased the $9.99 Mark of the Wolves, all you need to do to get Code Mystic's updated version is to download the patch. You don't need to purchase the game again.

Teen Wolf

Garou, though released as part of Fatal Fury's 25th anniversary, actually represents a sharp departure from the previous games in the series. The two most notable changes are subtractions. First, multiplane fighting is kicked to the curb. Second, though he's still a playable character, long-time series protagonist Terry Bogard no longer fronts the story. Instead, Terry's young ward, Rock—the son of the deceased super-powered gangster, Geese Howard—plays the role of the troubled hero who struggles with the evil blood coursing through his veins. Mark of the Wolves is a 1990s fighting game, so the story is relatively bare-bones.

Despite removing and downplaying some series-specific elements, Garou doesn't feel any less a Fatal Fury game. It's set in the Southtown, and it features multiple fighters with classic Fatal Fury lineages, whether via blood relationships to, or martial-arts tutelage from, older characters. Kim Kaphwan isn't in the game, for example, but his sons Dong-Hwan and Jae Hoon continue his legacy of swift, combo-heavy taekwondo kicks.

Smooth Moves

Mark of the Wolves boasts a flashy combat style. The game utilizes a four-button control scheme (Light Punch, Heavy Punch, Light Kick, Heavy Kick) that lets you string together combos with ease. The combo action isn't as wild as Killer Instinct's wonderfully ridiculous links and hit totals, but the characters' neutral, special, and super attacks move with a speed and hard-hitting grace not seen in previous Fatal Fury games.

This is all due to Garou's terrific animations. Likely influenced by the animation bonanza that is Street Fighter III, Mark of the Wolves' characters are bursting with life. Bonne Jenet's swaying idle stance is hypnotic, as are Hotaru Futuba's balletic sweeping attacks. And few video game moments are patently cool as the frequently GIFed Rock Howard win pose in which he sprouts electric wings as he nonchalantly turns his back to the players. Yes, Rock's so cool that he refuses to acknowledge you. Unfortunately, Mark of the Wolves has just a dozen default characters, plus two unlock-able boss characters. That's a far cry from the character count in the Editors' Choice award-winning The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match. That seminal SNK fighter has an incredible 64-person roster.

Garou was originally built on the then-aging Neo Geo platform, hardware that made its debut in 1990. As a result, you can spot some of the sacrifices that SNK made to squeeze so much animation into a Neo Geo cart. Gato's waterfall stage, for example, has a decent amount of water animation, but the colors are bland. And any stage with onlookers suffers from barely animated, low-detail people that clash with the beautiful action in the foreground. Still, despite their issues, most stages are well designed, with day-night transitions and cool light-and-shadow effects.

The eye candy reaches its zenith when you unleash a super move. Each character has a base-level S-Power Super and a high-level P-Power Super that fills the screen with dazzling special effects. They're also brutal attacks that drain a good chunk of an opponent's life bar. These marvels of 1990s video game sprite work will make you long for the days when companies had the time and budgets to devote such care to fighting games.

With Garou's development moved from Dotemu to Code Mystics, the game plays a bit better. The original Steam port suffered from dropped animation frames, but this version plays excellently. Garou includes a training mode for practicing moves before mixing it up in local versus or online play.

Aim for the T.O.P.

Besides normals, specials, and super moves, Garou gives you numerous other fighting tools. You can bust out hops, super jumps, dashes, Counter Hits, Guard Crushes, and other advanced moves that are common to SNK's Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters series.

Mark of the Wolves includes a few moves that aren't series staples. Feints, for example, let you get into your opponent's head by executing the first few frames of a special move, but without the follow-up animation. Using a feint, you can fake throwing a fireball, which may cause the opponent to execute a punishable reaction move. Used in that fashion, feints aren't particularly effective against AI foes, but some feint moves grant other abilities, such as armor or the ability to cancel a normal move into another move. Likewise, Break Moves are select cancellable super or special moves that let you recover faster and extend your combos.

But it's the Tactical Offense Position (T.O.P.) that Garou players will use (and enjoy) most. After selecting your character, you're tasked with picking a section of the life bar in which your T.O.P activates. Once your character's life bar falls within that T.O.P. area, your fighter receives increased attack damage, limited health regeneration, faster super-meter build up, and a special attack that's only available when you are in T.O.P. Mode. As a result, where you place the T.O.P. is very important. If you position T.O.P. at the front of your life bar, you'll begin the match with its many benefits activated. This is a wise ploy if your goal is to squash the opponent right out of the gate. On the other hand, if you expect a long, protracted match from an equally skilled foe, you may want to place T.O.P. at the tail end of your life bar for a late-round shot of life.

The Just Defend

Mark of the Wolves has a strong offensive game, but it boasts respectable defensive chops, too. At the defensive core is Just Defend, an advanced form of blocking that grants many benefits. By blocking an attack at the last possible moment before it registers as a successful hit, you absorb the blow without taking damage—even if it's a special or super move. A Just Defend also replenishes your life a bit and safeguards your Guard Meter from Guard Crushes. It also enables aerial blocking, Guard Counters, and the ability to quickly recover from a block stun state. In short, mastering Just Defend is essential for high-level play.

My one criticism of Just Defend is that it doesn't present a high risk/reward system in the same way that Street Fighter III's Parry does. Because you press back to initiate a Just Defend, there's a good chance that you'll execute a regular block if you blow the timing. That may prove deadly if you're trying to stave off chip damage when you have a sliver of life remaining, but otherwise it's not a big loss. Street Fighter III's Parry, on the other hand, demands that you press forward to deflect damage, so if you blow the timing, you eat the attack. A Parry is a far more satisfying experience than a Just Defend, because mastering it requires serious time in the lab, and there's far more at stake when you execute it.

PC Requirements and Options

Unsurprisingly, Mark of the Wolves isn't a very demanding title—it's nearly two decades old, after all. You simply need a PC that has at least a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 500MB of disk space, and the Windows Vista operating system. Garou is a Steam game, so naturally it supports Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud Saves, Steam Leaderboards, and Remote Play Together, too.

Like Baseball Stars 2, The Last Blade, and other Steam ports of classic Neo Geo games, Mark of the Wolves includes numerous video options for both old and new display technologies. You can play the game in either the 4:3 (with letterboxing) and 16:9 aspect ratios, and you can also apply pixel resolutions ranging from 800 by 600 to 3840 by 2160 (4K). My gaming desktop smoothly ran the game at 60 frames per second, at 1080p resolution.

There's a video filtering option that lets you smooth out the sharp pixels when you're playing relatively close to the monitor, though it does soften the graphical pop a bit. You can also apply scan lines at 50 percent or 100 percent thickness to replicate the old school CRT experience.

Fresh Online Play

Unlike The Last Blade, Mark of the Wolves has a rejuvenated thriving online community thanks to the new rollback netcode. Dotemu's Garou netcode was mediocre at best; Code Mystics' Garou netcode is excellent. I've played many people online and the bouts felt as good as local fights. Props to SNK for hiring Code Mystics to implement excellent netcode years after the game's original Steam release.

In addition, the game gives you the option to tinker with the amount of delay-based vs. rollback netcode to compensate for pokey internet connections. Sadly, Garou lacks a spectator mode for watching others play.

The Legend of the Hungry Wolf

If you found the previous Garou: Mark of the Wolves unsatisfactory, due to the frame rate and netcode issues, Code Mystic's version will put a smile on your face. This updated Garou surpases the original Steam release, and stands tall as one of the best fighting games on PC.

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