"It was partly designed to be simple and accessible, and according to myth, a tribute to their friendly rivalry with Capcom, since SNK was aware that they were facing financial woes and might not get the chance to do another big fighting game. I think it's slightly overrated, but still a fun time, and is probably SNK's best-looking 2D game."
Apologies, my device won't allow me to delete 'Neff:'.
I present a brief
history of the decline of arcades, combo systems, and the end of the Neo Geo era, told by DevilXYZ.
So, the system in Garou was the evolution of SNK's "Combination Arts" system they began in Fatal Fury 3. My friends dubbed it the 'Scrub System' as you could just press the A button for short combo strings. At the time it came out, combo sequences were the hot thing. Killer Instinct, Tekken, Mortal Kombat 3, and the Capcom Marvel games had complex combo strings that were integral to the games. It showed off if you were a good player or not to the other players in the arcade. In my town, each arcade game had its own groups of players that stuck to a certain game. The white kids played KI and Mortal Kombat. The Vietnamese kids played Tekken, Marvel games and some KoF.
My group was a mixture of the two, so we played everything, meaning we were 'allowed' to join in by placing a quarter or token on the cabinet glass for the next round. Yes, anyone could join in on these games, but got a silent beat down with combos in silence. If you were one of us though, you got acknowledged warmly by the other players. Things like 'oh shit, here comes 'Jago' in Tekken land!' would be an example. 'Welcome to 'dial a combo' city, bitch'! It was cool, and was a way to build up new friendships at the time.
Enter Fatal Fury 3. Despite the internet claiming FF was never that popular, Fatal Fury Special was pretty hot. It hit around the time SF2 Turbo came out and had everything that made a good fighting game at the time. The day that FF3 came out though, the machine was a ghost town. No one would touch it. I remember walking up to it and studying the ruleset and was like, okay…..this doesn't look good. But those graphics and music were pretty great for the time. I played it and found out why. The whole combo system was tied into the "combination arts" easy system. Uh oh. Baby game. The arcade operator came over and watched me standing alone playing. He knew I had a Neo Geo as I regularly carried my Memory Card and spoke to him about what new titles to buy. He was like this one is getting sold if I can't make any money on it. I was like it looks great, but the gameplay just isn't fun in this one. He was like are you going to buy it? I replied, not on cartridge, but this soundtrack is good enough to buy on CD. Neo CD games you could throw into your CD player and enjoy the soundtracks and were only $50, not $250-300 for the cart. It was like a deluxe album with loading times.
That game never got played in that arcade. It stuck around though, and I did end up getting the Neo CD version and mastering the characters in about a day, which was very simple at the time. No one played it. People watched me play, from time to time, but even my friends stayed away- even at my house for free play. It was like the scene from Back to the Future 2 where Marty is playing 'Wild Gunman' in a sense. A baby game- the other kids scoffed at. It killed Fatal Fury. From that point on, it was dead. Later Real Bout had some players, but not crowds. The crowds stuck to each new iteration of Tekken and the like, but it sort of put a bad mark on Neo Geo games. It was also around that time, arcades were in decline. The hardcore gamers like me played at our houses more and more and only went to the arcades to see new games. The after work visits dropped off for the cheaper home convenience.
By the time Garou came out, arcades were in bad shape. The arcade operator I was close to was trying to sell out and leave the business and arcades in the area were shutting down. Neo Geo emulation was on the scene as was CPS1 and most CPS2. Sure PS1 and Saturn had those games, but they had loading times. You could get the arcade games perfectly running on your PC in no time at all for free. I ended up selling all of my Neo Geo CD collection because of that and kept a few games to listen to in the CD player. Garou was 'cheap' on cart to get from Japan, too. $175, but it still retained a version of that easy combo system. Real Bout had somewhat fixed it, but Garou undid it and leaned more into what FF3 was. Great graphics, 'bad' gameplay. It was just as dead as Street Fighter 3, which looked phenomenal, but was considered 'ugly' and 'old school' thanks to the 3D titles. It took ten years for people to realize that 3rd Strike was a really good, deep game. I never even saw the sequels of SF3 in the arcades and instead bought them at home.
It's a different era now, decades later. Thanks to Smash Bros success, companies have to make their fighting games accessible to all, or they don't sell. Kids just wanna mash and win. I'm not saying there isn't a skill level in those games, it's just different than how it used to be.
. Geese Howard squeezed out better from his cheeks on the way off that skyscraper! What garbage. Did SNK not look into the sales numbers from back then? I guess not.
