Garou Mark of the Wolves 2, the return of a legendary series.

The EVO 2022 Tournament in Las Vegas had a lot of entertaining matches, and reveals over several days. On the Street Fighter front both Kimberly, and Juri were officially unveiled. I had already covered their look on this blog. My guess that Kimberly was a ninja turned out to be correct. She seems to be fascinated by ‘80s pop culture. That she probably has in common with the new Street Fighter developers. I’ll be talking more about SF more in the future, as the rest of the cast gets unveiled. Right now I want to talk about SNK, and all the buzz they have been generating in the past few weeks. It all started when someone got their hands on beta material for the unreleased Garou Mark of the Wolves 2. Sprites, unfinished stages, and some other content was dropped online. It set the community on fire.

The original Garou MOTW was released in 1999. The game was set in the shared universe of the King of Fighters franchise. This includes the characters, and relationships unveiled in Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Buriki One, Ikari Warriors, and more. Garou MOTW was centered around a young star named Rock Howard. He was the son of Marie Heinlein, and Geese Howard. Geese, as you may know was the main villain in the Fatal Fury series. Geese was one of the great fighting game heavies, and was such a profound character that my second podcast for this blog was about the rivalry between Terry Bogard and Geese Howard. The Fatal Fury games were created by Takashi Nishiyama, the creator of the original Street Fighter. Once he left Capcom to join SNK he (and many members of the fighting game community) considered Fatal Fury to be the spiritual successor to Street Fighter.

Rock Howard was created by Nobuyuki Kuroki in 1998. Mr. Kuroki, and Yasuyuki Oda wanted to create a young successor to Terry Bogard. They decided that Rock would carry the torch in the Garou series. Terry would still be in the game for fans of the original star, however the plot, and cast were centered on Rock. The game was a generational love letter. Kim Kaphwan was the taekwondo star of the Fatal Fury series. His sons Kim Jae Hoon, and Kim Dong Hwan were also youthful stars of Garou MOTW. Terry was presented as a mentor to the young Howard. Many assumed it was because he had a guilty conscience. That was a fair guess considering that he kicked Geese off the roof of his office building. Over the years it was revealed that Terry had become a father-figure for Rock. He had a genuine affection for the kid. It was revealed in the official character art. In the sprites used through the series, and in the game cinemas.

Every fighting game needs a villain. It would have been interesting if Rock had to battle his father, but that rivalry was usually reserved for Terry. Not to mention that the father, and son rivalry had already been done in the Tekken franchise. Instead the Garou series would pull in not one, but two heavies for Rock. There was Kain R. Heinlein his biological uncle, and Abel Cameron aka Grant, his other father figure. This dynamic would make for an interesting plot. Abel was an enforcer for Kain, he wore a mask while performing his dirty work, not unlike Takuma Sakazaki as “Mr. Karate” when he worked for Geese. The reason Terry was helping raise Rock was because his mother had died. Geese wanted nothing to do with his son, Kain kept his distance for a large chunk of his life. So it was Abel, and Terry that took over duties, especially Terry. One of the biggest revelations in the game (BIG SPOILERS) was that Rock’s mom was allegedly alive. Sadly there was no resolution to this plot twist as SNK was in a bad financial situation post 1999. They cancelled development on the sequel, and had to restructure the company. Fans could only guess what was the fate of Rock, and the rest of the cast.

The game had a very strong reaction from audiences. It was considered one of the greater sprite-based fighters of the ‘90s. The animation was brilliant, balance was spot on, and cast memorable. On the aesthetic front the game looked like the Street Fighter Zero / Alpha version of Fatal Fury. It was such a beloved game that fans never gave up hope on seeing a sequel. Even before the actual sequel sprites were released there were developers that wanted to pick up the license. DotEmu developed Streets of Rage 4, a sequel to a beloved ‘90s brawler series by Sega. They created some fan art of what their version of Garou 2 would look like. It set the FGC ablaze. The community would create animations, and concept backgrounds for what they wish had been. The Jaguar Bridge concept level by Jesús “Nerkin” Campos was an absolute work of art. Many artists never forgot how great the game was, and never gave up hope for a sequel.

After more than 20 years it looked like nothing would ever become of Garou 2. That was until EVO 2022 when SNK dropped what could be argued as the biggest bomb of the tournament. SNK talked about the updates to KOF XV, and Samurai Showdown, including new characters, cross play, and rollback support for online play. Then they showed an illustration by Tonko aka Aki Senno featuring Rock Howard. The framing of the art was clearly done with purpose. The alleyway might be in Second Southtown, the large building in the distance may be Geese Howard’s. In the background are Billy Kane, a well known enforcer for Geese, and Kain Heinlein. From a storytelling perspective this might be Rock Howard being pulled to the “dark side” in a power struggle over Second Southtown. As of this writing we have no idea who else is going to be in the game, or what the story could be. We don’t even know if the studio is finishing the sprite-based version, or starting from scratch with a whole new cast.

As far as the canon of the game went, there were the events, and relationships specifically mentioned in the title. Some had straightforward endings, some were open-ended. These things really didn’t influence the direction of the King of Fighters tournament in one way or the other. There was not much else in terms of anime, or manga that covered the events of the game. For sure I thought it would have gotten highlighted in the King of Fighters Destiny cgi series. Sadly it did not. Many popular games had a corresponding show or comic book series. Capcom had one of the first illegal, and licensed comics in the world for Street Fighter II. SNK was just behind with the Art of Fighting, and King of Fighter manga. Through the ‘90s the various games would get a licensed manga in Japan, and sometimes that book was translated, and released in the US as well. Licensed books were also created in the Chinese market, these were known as manhua.

I had collected both Street Fighter manga, and manhua, and more than a few manhua books from the various SNK games. Only recently did I learn that there was a manhua series based on Garou MOTW. I managed to get all 10 issues of the limited run comic. As far as I know they have never been translated into another language. I scanned in several pages, and will be sharing them on this blog over the next few days. I hope to see you back for that. I’d like to know if you collect any comics, manga, or anime on a favorite game. It doesn’t have to be a fighter. What do you collect, and what’s one of your favorite pieces? I’d like to read about it in the comments. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!