Garou: Mark Of The Wolves
THE KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT
Nick rarely gets angry about idiots on the internet, but the recent backlash against Terry Bogard must be addressed
NEO GEO 1999 SNK
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I’m usually on the receiving end of a lot of ‘kids these days’ rants, despite being in my thirties – such is life as a millennial. You’ve probably heard about us in the Daily Mail, where we’re accused of being snowflakes and killing doorbells. For that reason, I try not to moan about what I perceive as youthful ignorance, but online reactions to the inclusion of Terry Bogard in Super Smash Bros Ultimate have flipped the switch and now I’m in full Grandpa Simpson mode.
The most prominent complaint that I’ve seen has been that Terry somehow doesn’t deserve the spot. “Literally who is Terry Bogard, what is Fatal Fury, WTF is SNK,” says one Smash fan. “No one even knows that flop character outside of Japan,” says another. These are real things that actual human beings have said. It’s kind of astonishing – SNK has been one of Japan’s most prominent developers, its hardware was the backbone of the Nineties arcade market. Terry Bogard has been in dozens of games – and ironically, more of them are crossovers than actual Fatal Fury games. Hell, Terry is a marquee inclusion in The King Of Fighters series – not only the first major crossover fighting series, but one of Super Smash Bros series director Masahiro Sakurai’s arcade favourites. Worse yet, people are saying it’s impossible to memorise his moves and that “any character with inputs is poorly designed” – never mind the fact that you can use Smash-style commands instead of Terry’s Fatal Fury move inputs.
But you know what really worries me? This shows that these kids have never played Mark Of The Wolves. They don’t have to be a lost generation, though – there’s a Switch version available. We can teach the youth, wean them off wavedashing and teach them about the beauty of the Just Defend and the Tactical Offensive Position mechanics. Once they look past the fact that he’s wearing different clothes, they’ll see how well those clothes are animated. Hopefully, when they discover a classic of the fighting genre, they’ll have a little more respect for SNK – and maybe explore what else Smash’s historic characters have to offer.