| |||||||||
Fatal Fury (餓狼伝説: Garou Densetsu in Japan) is a video game series developed by SNK for the Neo-Geo system. It is SNK's oldest Beat 'em up game, and was once a rival to Capcom's Street Fighter series.
The main fighting game feature that Fatal Fury was known for was the two-plane system. Characters would fight from two different planes, and by stepping between the planes, attacks could be dodged with ease (of course, there are special moves that attack both planes at once). Other features that became part of the fighting game vernacular include the "Deadly Rave Super Combo" (a super combo that, after execution, a player must press a preset series of buttons with exact timing for the entire combo to execute) and the "Just Defend" (a type of protected block in which you regain lost life).
The series revolves around a fictitious American city called South Town. It is a place full of crime and corruption, and the man behind most of it was Geese Howard. Each year he'd create a fighting tournament known as "The King of Fighters", but no one could beat his appointed champion, Billy Kane. The series would focus on the simultaneous rise of the "Legendary Wolf" Terry Bogard and the fall of Geese's criminal empire. The King of Fighters tournament would no longer be a part of the storyline by the 3rd game, and instead have its own spin-off series. Later games in the Fatal Fury series would center around Terry Bogard's battles with Geese Howard in an attempt to stop him from finding an ancient scroll that would give him the powers of a lost martial art.
In Garou - Mark of the Wolves, it's a generation later, and Rock Howard, Terry's protege and son of Geese Howard, discovers something shocking about his past when he enters the "King of Fighters - Maximum Mayhem" tournament.
These are the games that are considered part of the Fatal Fury story:
These games are not part of the Fatal Fury series, but involve characters from Fatal Fury:
Fatal Fury contained many characters, some appearing in other series as well. These are the characters who appeared in a fighting capacity at some point in the series, listed in alphabetical order:
These include characters that have appeared in The King of Fighters as well as the SNK VS. Series.
Like Capcom's game trilogy, Final Fight, the Fatal Fury series may be confused with Square Enix's popular Final Fantasy series if abbreviated FF. To prevent abbreviation confusion in general gaming circles and in role-playing game circles, the game series title would sometimes. be abbreviated FFu instead, and the name of Final Fight would be abbreviated FFi. Usually, the name of Fatal Fury or its Japanese name Garou Densetsu are spelled out in the role-playing video game circles. One exception is that Fatal Fury Special is normally abbreviated FFS, and that Real Bout Fatal Fury is abbreviated RB1. Fatal Fury Special is abbreviated FFuS in the SPC audio archives. Fighting game specific Internet forums use FFa as the abbreviation for Final Fantasy.