Garou Mark of the Wolves, how some characters evolved from concept art

At the EVO 2024 tournament in Japan SNK showed off a playable build of Fatal Fury City of Wolves, this was the sequel to the 1999 fan favorite Garou Mark of the Wolves. I had written about the original title, and updates on the sequel a few times on the blog. Most recently I talked about Preecha the Muay Thai genius. The entire character lineup hadn’t been revealed yet. There was a lot of speculation as to who was next to be unveiled. I wondered if the concept art of the original game might give us a hint as to how some of the cast evolved. Thanks to Zero an Italian friend of the blog (Grazie!) I was able to put together this quick writeup. 

Preecha was not in the original game, however a sprite sheet of the Garou 2 cast had been revealed a few years ago. In the lineup there was a Muay Thai girl that was an understudy of Joe Higashi. If we looked at the original concept art we could see there had been a few girls in the planning stages. One of them had shorts, and padded feet, and hands. She might have been the prototype design for Preecha from 25 years ago. There was also a girl with a briefcase. I think this might have been one of the conceptss for the pirate princess B. Jenet.

In the official canon B. Jenet came from a rich family, however she was bored with her lifestyle. She rebelled by forming a pirate crew, and going on treasure hunts. I think the girl with the briefcase might have been how Jenet would have looked when she was running away from home. An actual pirate girl would pop up in the concept art as well. The character had a sword, had a classic skull, and crossbones tattoo on her shoulder, and wore tattered clothing. She looked much more aggressive, and mysterious than the final design for Jenet. The character’s hair would get longer, and much softer in revised drawings. Eventually setting the template that would become the sassy blonde pirate queen herself.

I’m a firm believer that no good idea goes to waste. There were a few character designs that didn’t seem to work for the original Garou, however they would be revisited in other titles by SNK. One of the early concepts was a bald fighter with an oversized coat. He seemed to have sharpened nails. At a quick glance he might have been confused for Mr. Big, one of the South Town bosses that had first appeared in the Art of Fighting. So this character was redesigned a few more times. The coat was made more stylized, not unlike Jedah from the Vampire/Darkstalkers series.

His costume, and overall look would continue to evolve. Eventually he appeared like some sort of martial arts assassin. This character seemed to be one of the poison fist fighters like Duo Lon, A.K.I., Kurow, and Red Snake. Although this character wouldn’t appear in Garou in 1999, the design seemed to be the prototype for Lin. He would debut a year later in the King of Fighters 2000.

This wasn’t the only character destined to appear in a related game. Another concept character looked like a wild bruiser with a metallic arm, or brace. This arm was a weapon, a sort of cannon that could be used to fire projectiles. Long time fans of the SNK universe could remember that there was another fighter that had a similar mechanic who debuted in 1999. Maxima was a soldier that underwent a cybernetic transformation to make him bigger, stronger, with a false arm that could shoot projectiles. The weird thing was that this character had actually been in the planning stages from the team much earlier than that.

I argued that the designs for K’, Maxima, and Kryzalid from the KOF games were pulled from Daraku Tenshi: the Fallen Angels. The design for a large fighter with an arm cannon was seen in 1998 with the US soldier Harry Ness. The Steel Hearts team that developed the Fallen Angels for Psykio was credited for designing KOF 2001, and 2002, I would argue that their designs were influencing SNK as early as 1999. There was simply too much crossover with what would appear in the SNK games for it to be a coincidence.

There were two concept characters in Garou that only needed a little bit of polish in order to get them ready for the game. There was a classic martial arts villain, and a mysterious warrior in the planning stages. These designs could have been revised again, and again until the best elements of each ended up creating a single character. Instead the team saw that there was enough to make two distinct warriors out of them.

One of the designs was fairly straightforward. What if there were a fighter that was stylized on classic Chinese villains. Someone with a long ponytail, long pants, and wushu sash belt. He would appear similar to Feng Wei who debuted in Tekken 5 in 2004. In the earliest draft this character had massive black tattoos on his hands, and forearms. Perhaps they were tattoos, or they were to signify that he had some sort of poison fist. It was also possible that this marker was transferred to Lin for the King of Fighters game instead.

The look of this character was refined so that he looked more classic, and distinct from the other fighters they were working on. Gato ended up being one of the main villains in the Garou manhua (Chinese comics). His look was a little too traditional in my book. There weren’t any elements in his design that could have connected him to the modern era. He could have fit right into the feudal era of Samurai Spirits, or the Last Blade rather than the modern world. It didn’t take a lot to make the difference either. Something subtle like giving him sneakers (as Capcom did with Yan, Yang, and Jamie) could bring him into our time, while still allowing him to represent classic kung-fu forms.

The other villain that SNK was working on was supposed to be more mysterious. One of the ways they did this was by making his costume more stylized. Perhaps he would have only one arm in a sleeve, or even have him wearing a cape, and mask. These things were rarely seen in fighting games, and usually only appeared on bad guys. This rough idea would be the basis for the masked Grant. He would become the enforcer for Kain R. Heinlein, the main villain in Garou Mark of the Wolves.

Not every concept piece had potential. Some ideas were scrapped, some ideas would be revisited in sprite form for the proposed Garou sequel. There were some rough ideas that I was glad were changed early on. One of which was for the Black karate master Marco Rodriguez. This was a character that I had celebrated a decade ago in my second blog entry. In his original design he had an afro, rather than a pompadour. The afro was a trope that I had talked about previously as well. It was a bit lazy from Japanese developers to stick Black characters with a basketball, or afro because they simply couldn’t be bothered to have better representation.

There were some other ideas in the drafting process that I’ll talk about more in the future. How other popular characters evolved from concept art to the screen. Until then I’d like to hear your thoughts on the comments section. Were there ever any concept characters that you wish had appeared in your favorite games? Tell me about it. 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!

Fatal Fury City of Wolves, a new game system, and new character revealed!

Not long ago SNK released several trailers with new information for Fatal Fury City of the Wolves. This was the successor to the arcade classic Garou Mark of the Wolves. This was a game that I talked about with every new tease. I thought it was funny that each time a game trailers came out from Capcom, or SNK that my blog would get a significant bump in views. Even though I hadn’t written anything new about Street Fighter 6, the King of Fighters, or any other of games from those studios I still managed to double, or triple my daily views whenever there was any footage released by the publishers. It was humbling more than anything thinking that people that did web searches got pointed to my blog because I had written about them on, and off for years.

I’m going to highlight the things I was able to pull out of the two most recent trailers, those being the REV system, and the voice reveal trailer. I had no idea what the REV system was about, but according to Game Informer: “The REV system serves as City of the Wolves' big new addition, giving players enhanced attacks to bolster their offense. REV Blows are powerful, near-unblockable supercharged attacks; REV Guard serves as an enhanced block; REV Arts are flashy cinematic combo attacks; and REV Accel is a speedy assault of sorts.”

It made sense that the Garou team would be looking for ways to innovate the game play in the sequel. The King of Fighters universe had the tradition of a second “Spirit” bar going back to the Art of Fighting from 1992. Remember that the characters, and game play mechanics of Fatal Fury, and the Art of Fighting were ideas that The Godfather of fighting games Takashi Nishiyama had planned at both Capcom as something that might work in the Street Fighter franchise. Every studio since had been exploring ways to change up the game. V-ISM, Alpha Counters, Rage meters, Revenge meters, Super attacks were all variations on the spirit bar. What made the SNK games different was that you could charge this meter manually, and even drain your opponent’s by taunting them. I had a feeling that the REV system was the logical evolution of that classic mechanic.

I don’t usually talk a lot about strategy, offense, defense, and attacks. There are plenty of people on YouTube that can talk about frames, counters, and strategy. I’ve always been more focused on the visuals of fighting games. The first thing that stood out to me were the stylized graphics featured in the voice actors trailer. I noticed that the characters had lines, almost crosshatches on their skin, and clothing when the camera zoomed in on them. It made them look like they were hand drawn. This level of detail was not lost on me. Having multiple fighting games developed on the Unreal engine made them all look the same. In order to stand out a lot of studios had to develop their own graphics engine. Even if they used Unreal it was still possible to make their characters stand out from their competition by modifying the light, models, and textures used on the characters. The games that used classic 2D sprite proportions, but created in a 3D model definitely stood out from the rest. This was the topic of GuiltyGearXrd's Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D, a GDC presentation from 2015.

I genuinely loved what I was seeing in the Fatal Fury City of Wolves trailer. The studio managed to recreate a lot of the same stylized figures that were featured more than 20 years ago in Garou, but now in 3D. The level of care that went into creating the visuals should not be understated. It took much more than lighting a 3D model. If you looked carefully the characters didn’t necessarily have realistic shadows. The darkest parts of the figures were designed to highlight muscles, folds in clothing, and even the lines of hair. On the edges there was just a hint of a contrasting light, that caused the edges to stand out from the background. This light source did not wash out the shadows that the art team wanted to preserve on the character models. This must have taken some clever programming to achieve.

The other thing I noticed in the trailer, aside from the amazing looking bright flashes of light, and color when performing special attacks, were actually the ways in which speed was conveyed. The models were blurred when attacking, this was an old trick that I remember seeing during the development of Street Fighter IV back in 2008. What was different however were how strong the blur effect was depending on the speed of the attacks. When a character ran they were blurred a little. The same thing when they were knocked back. However if they were performing a quick special attack the blur effect was even stronger. For the people that don’t understand the distinction between graphics, and aesthetics in fighting games I wrote a three part series earlier on the blog. Here are the links. The aesthetic versus graphics debate, part 1…, The aesthetic versus graphics debate, part 2…, The aesthetic versus graphics debate, part 3....

The character reveal trailer highlighted four returning faces; Terry Bogard, Rock Howard, Tizoc, and Hotaru Futaba. The new person in the lineup was named Preecha, and she appeared to be a Muay Thai specialist. SNK had a tradition of introducing girl characters out of left field in several of their fighting games. For example in the King of Fighters 2000 the studio featured Hinako Shijo. The diminutive girl with taped up fingers practiced sumo wrestling. She could manhandle the largest characters, and shove them with almost supernatural force. It certainly broke tradition, and made for an interesting shift in the way fighting game characters would be received. Before Hinako’s debut when most of us thought of sumo we could only imagine fat men like E. Honda from Street Fighter, Taka-Arashi from Virtua Fighter, Akatsuki-Maru from Buriki One, and Ganryu from Tekken. Hinako had actually followed tradition going back decades. Female judo, Muay Thai, and boxers had been featured in SNK titles as early as the ‘90s. Also there was also a trend of featuring girls that had a unique look, and form of fighting. I discussed this in the Odd Girl Out blog. These characters that broke tradition included Lucky Chloe, Emi, Area, and now Hinako.

SNK was again shaking up the traditional roles with a female Muay Thai practitioner. That form of fighting was brutal in its effectiveness. It was an ancient tradition that was honed in the battlefield. It was a perfect counter to karate in manga, and anime which was seen as a refined martial art. That was one of the reasons why Sagat had that style against Ryu. The most fearsome, and earliest fighting game bosses was a Muay Thai monster. He was the template that Fahkumram from Tekken 7 was cut from. Now we had a young lady that was capable of delivering traditional clinches, elbows, kicks, and knee strikes. If you were not familiar with the different forms of fighting I covered it previously on the blog as well. Here’s the link where I talked about the history of Muay Thai, and Tae-Kwon Do characters in fighting games. Preecha was not the first female to use that form, that would be Chompoo from Capoeira Fighter 3. But two distinct characters in the 45+ years of fighting games let you know how rare it was to assign traditional forms to girls.

SNK had a couple of star Muay Thai practitioners going back to the birth of the series. Joe Higashi, and Hwa Jai made their debut in the original Fatal Fury. Hwa was a villain in the first game, but would return more recently as a playable character in KOF XIII. Given that Joe was a friend of Terry, and Andy Bogard I would say it was possible that he was the teacher of Preecha. There were several reasons why thought this was the case. The first was the most obvious. In the sprite art for Garou Mark of the Wolves 2 from more than 20 years ago we could see Joe Higashi was in arm, and leg casts. Clearly he was not able to fight at that point, but he was accompanying a Muay Thai, possibly kickboxing girl. This was the template that would be revisited for Preecha.

The other thing about having a younger Muay Thai fighter in the game was due to tradition. Many of the characters in the Garou series were young masters of a particular form. They were essentially the new guard, picking up where the icons left off. Even in the sister KOF series Kyo Kusanagi had already surpassed his father Saisyu. Rock Howard was the son of series villain Geese Howard. Yet Rock was mentored by Terry. This meant that his fighting style was a mix of the two, and in time would probably eclipse both of their accomplishments in his battles. The game also featured Kim Dong-Hwan, and Kim Jae-Hoon, the sons of Tae-Kwon Do master Kim Kaphwan, Hokutomaru was a very young ninja master, and understudy of Andy Bogard, the younger brother of Terry. I wouldn’t be surprising to see Lilly Kane appear in the series, the compassionate little sister of the villainous Billy Kane.

Although Marco Rodriguez was an adult, he was still the heir apparent of Ryo Sakazaki, and the Kyokugen form of karate. Of the original three heroes of Fatal Fury only Joe was lacking representation in the Garou series. I think that was now resolved. The thing about each of the new characters was that they were still lacking the complete library of moves, strength, and stamina of their masters. In the voice trailer we saw that Preecha had a number of amazing moves. She had all of the fundamental Muay Thai strikes, and more important she was performing the moves correctly. There were no missteps, or sloppy attacks. What was noticeable was that she did not have the hurricane uppercut of Higashi, the one that caused a small whirlwind to fly across the stage. She did however have the punch portion worked out, just not the projectile.

Preecha was a popular name in Thailand, it meant “wise.” But how do you tell audiences that she was wise, or smart? We got a hint of that with her glasses, which were typically presented on smart characters in popular media. To highlight her youth we got an explosion of color. Each of her fingernails were alternating pastel colors. Then there were the colorful streaks in her hair, with sensible bangs to keep her hair off her face while fighting. Did you notice her arm bands? The traditional pra jiad arm bands were symbolic of the culture. Preecha had purple bands with orange, and sky colored links. Purple was the colors assigned to a lower-level fighter. The colors of the bands could be similar to the colors of belts in karate, or Tae-Kwon Do. In Muay Thai purple meant she was an intermediate fighter, the alternate colors were complimentary to her hair, and outfit. Traditional Muay Thai featured hands wrapped in knotted cord, which were much more damaging to opponents. We could see her hands were wrapped in cord as well, however these were actually gloves made of cord, so that she could put them on quickly. I think the most interesting detail in her outfit could easily be missed.

Preecha had taped ankles, however she also wore slouch socks, which was an integral part of kogal, or gyaru fashion. According to Wikipedia “Kogal refers to the members of the Gyaru subculture who are still in high school and who incorporate their school uniforms into their dress style. These high school girls are characterized by the typical bleached hair, make-up, shortened skirts, and wearing of loose socks.” Preecha doesn’t fit the role of fashionable teen, but she does represent the same youthful energy of other characters in Garou. This was the most important part of SNK character designs, when compared to the Street Fighter cast. I did a multi-part series breaking down the approach from the studio. The links are below.

Hiding the master in plain sight, the genius of SNK's character design... part 1 

Hiding the master in plain sight, the genius of SNK's character design... part 2 

Hiding the master in plain sight, the genius of SNK's character design... part 3 

Hiding the master in plain sight, the genius of SNK's character design... part 4 

Hiding the master in plain sight, the genius of SNK's character design... part 5 

Hiding the master in plain sight, the genius of SNK's character design... final part 

I’m eager to find out more about Preecha’s story, how she plays overall as I enjoyed playing as Joe in earlier entries. I’m eager to see who else is waiting in the wings of this highly anticipated sequel. Anyhow those were the things I was able to pull from the trailer. What things did you notice? Were there any character you were waiting to be revealed? Tell me about it in the comments section please. 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!