Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is out and, thankfully, it’s really great! It’s been more than just a minute since the last Fatal Fury game, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, came out. But although SNK really took their sweet time, considering how good City of the Wolves is, it was almost worth the wait. I say almost because did it really take you more than two decades to do so, SNK?

As I’ve been playing a whole lot of City of the Wolves a lot, I am reminded of the more than three decades of history I have with the series. That’s because I was there ever since SNK pumped out the very first Fatal Fury game way back in 1991! City of the Wolves might be the first ever Fatal Fury game a lot of these youngsters have ever played. Well, let me take you back when the first Fatal Fury game was the first Fatal Fury game I’ve ever played!

So, way back in 1991, there was only one real fighting game out there: Street Fighter II. This was, after all, the game that started the fighting game boom. I would go to the nearest arcade after school and try to get me a few rounds of Street Fighter II in. One fateful day, on my way to the row of Street Fighter II cabinets, I noticed a new game was installed. It… looked like a fighting game but it wasn’t Street Fighter II. The graphics were much more bright and colorful. The sprites looked large. This was my first time seeing the first Fatal Fury game… And no one was playing it!

In retrospect, I kind of understand why no one was trying it out. It was new and untested. They didn’t have Ryu or Ken or any other of the Street Fighter II characters we’ve known for months. Well, I just wanted to see what it played like and it didn’t go so well for me. I picked who I presumed was the hero of the game as he was in the middle and I chose my opponent. I picked the old man because, well, he was old. It shouldn’t be too hard to beat an old man! What I didn’t know was this old man would get all buff on me after I whupped him a bit! He then proceeded to beat me by flying at me with his propeller arms and by kicking fireballs at me! Yes, it wasn’t love at first sight.

I was still undeterred so I restarted. I still picked the hero, the guy in the middle who was wearing a red jacket and baseball cap. This time I chose the dude with a ponytail and, despite him bouncing all around the place with his kicks and him grabbing on the ceiling, I eked out a win. I then fought this boxer dude and I beat him by simply jump kicking him to death. This is when I got my first cutscene! This was actually amazing to see as, in Street Fighter II, you didn’t get any story in the middle of the game!

This was also when we’re taught your first special attack. Yeah, I’ve been trying to do special moves throughout my playthrough but nothing was coming out. So, seeing my character do this weird flippy punch thing may have looked stupid, but this did indicate there were special moves here! But try as I might, I couldn’t do it. I then promptly got beat by this breakdancer with a mohawk.

Luckily, it was around this time one of my friends saw me playing and he joined in. This was the only time we could actually test out the special attacks. We slowly discovered how to properly do special moves here. You had to be a little more precise with your motions. You couldn’t just roll the joystick quickly but take your time in doing it. And that weird flippy punch? You had to flick the joystick from the down position to up quickly, which was the opposite of performing circular motions! In fact, for me, it would only come out if you’re standing! If you’re crouching and you flick the stick up, it won’t come out! So, if I was crouching, I would have to stand for a split second, then flick the stick from down to up!

Once we figured all that out, we went through the arcade ladder and, after some experimentation, we beat the game… and it wasn’t that hard once you discover how to exploit the CPU and the weird damage and hit detection of the game! A prime example is, with the aforementioned old man, who is actually Tung Fu Rue. While he turning into his more muscular form, you can use the hero, which is obviously Terry Bogard, and a well-timed Power Wave for all of the projectile’s columns to hit, taking out half of his life and instantly turning him back to normal! Have Terry Bogard throw out another well-timed Power Wave after he’s done shrinking down and he’ll be down!

With the kickboxer character, Joe Higashi, it’s much easier! Once you knock out some of his life and he begins to transform, get up close and start mashing the punch button to get out his Bakuretsuken special attack. If timed properly, Joe Higashi will hit Tung Fu Rue with all of the punches, taking out half his life. Try to hit with another Bakuretsuken after he’s transformed back to normal to end the round!

Raiden may seem unstoppable at first. But you can trick him right as the round starts by whiffing a punch. When you do, he’ll use his Poison Mist, which will miss. Once he stops, he’s wide open to any character’s charging attack. This is especially funny with Andy Bogard as his Kuhadan attack will hit Raiden multiple times because of how large he is! This will actually kill Raiden if all of the hits connect!

Now, we all know SNK Boss Syndrome is a thing and some people think it applies to the first Fatal Fury game. Funny thing is the first Fatal Fury has two of the easiest bosses to beat! In fact, you can use the same strategy against both Billy Kane and Geese Howard with just a little tweaking! For Billy Kane, just wait for him to throw his stick at you. He’ll start cowering and block everything you throw at him. However, once he retrieves his stick, he’ll be left open and you can throw him. His new stick will shatter afterwards but he’ll start cowering again. Just wait for him to get a new stick and throw him again! Rinse and repeat! Geese Howard is even easier as you don’t have to wait for anything! Just walk up and throw him! Keep on doing it until you win!

I guess one of my favorite memories is actually beating Fatal Fury for the first time. In retrospect, Terry Bogard does outright murder Geese Howard by kicking him off the top of the building. But it did feel warranted thanks to all of the cutscenes that were sprinkled throughout. We got to see Geese initially admiring Terry for being a strong fighter and slowly coming to the realization he joined to tournament to get to him. This was indeed very different as we weren’t just seeing a character’s ending and then filling in the blanks. No, we were understanding the motivations while playing the game.

I also have to mention that, while it’s nothing special nowadays, seeing the current date pop up when you do beat the game, was jaw dropping. Sure, it was just the game looking up what was the date on its internal memory and displaying it. But it did make it feel like it was all happening at that very moment! Hey, it was the early ’90s! Things were simple back then! I will say I don’t understand why they can’t display the date right anymore, though.

As fun as the first Fatal Fury game was, it wasn’t much of a hit in my arcade. Sure, it would get some people to play it but it never really got as big as Street Fighter II. It was much slower and you could only play as three characters. There were only three buttons: punch, kick and throw. This did make Fatal Fury seem rather limited. There was also the lane switching gimmick and, even up to today, I still can’t figure out how to interject it into my gameplay to make it feel useful.

However, my friend and I just loved hogging the machine and it would always be a mad race to see who could pick Andy Bogard first. Yes, this game wasn’t balanced for competition as Andy Bogard was just too powerful because of one move: Zaneiken. This move was ridiculously fast, had virtually no start up and no recovery frames. This meant, once you picked Andy Bogard, all you had to do to win was spam Zaneiken to win! Even if your opponent blocks, the chip damage would eventually do them in! So, despite Terry Bogard being the main protagonist, Andy Bogard was the better character in the first Fatal Fury.

Even so, we would extend our playthrough as we would intentionally draw by precisely chipping away at each other’s lifebars so we could keep on playing for the entire ten rounds. Eventually, we would get to the tenth round… and the Andy Bogard player would just win anyways. Still, it was fun to gauge what attack to go with to really get the most out of our single tokens.

In retrospect, while I had a lot of fun with the first Fatal Fury game, I can acknowledge it was an inferior product, especially as it was competing with Street Fighter II, which had much better gameplay. Still, this did lay the foundation for SNK to become the fighting game juggernaut they are. This was the gestation of them refining their knowledge to make better sequels and other fighting games like Art of Fighting and the King of Fighters franchises. It may not hold up to today’s standards but, like Terry Bogard, it was rough around the edges but rose above its humble beginnings.

What was your first Fatal Fury game? Better question: what was your first ever fighting game? Let me know in the comments section below!