Garou: Mark of the Wolves

The Good
The game plays very much like the original arcade port; moves are easy to pull off, combos are very easy to perform, and easy to master. The graphics are exactly the same: absolutely no frames were dropped in the conversion, be it in the backgrounds, character animations or in-game demos.

The music also got a complete overhaul, and most of it sounds pretty good, but not as good as some of SNK's other works, like King Of Fighters 2000 or Samurai Shodown II. The only extras that this game offers are the possibility of using the bosses without a code, viewing the game endings, and obtaining some very good artwork by beating the game. It also includes a survival mode from the home NeoGeo release, in which you can recover or lose energy or special power with spheres that fall from your opponent as you hit him.

The Bad
There's just one thing that amazes me about this conversion: Whenever any sound is played, like a grunt, the announcer, or even a punch, the system reads it from the disc. This means that while you're playing you're bound to hear the system spin up the disc, move the laser, find the sound, and play it back. This is very noticeable, and it also causes the sounds to lag by up to three seconds.

The Bottom Line
This is a great game... if you think your Dreamcast can handle the constant data lookup. That little bug is inexcusable, and maybe it could've done much better in the US if it had been corrected before its release.