Legends Don't Die. They Get Bootlegged! ...I think.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8
- Core: Gambatte
- Heavy luck manipulation
- Unofficial game
- Genre: Fighting
Oh, you thought I was gonna TAS a Pokémon bootleg this year like I usually do? Well guess what, I TASed a Fatal Fury bootleg instead! Now this is something fresh and different from the usual... maybe.
This is a TAS for Garou: Mark of the Wolves 2001 for Game Boy Color. This bootleg game is a loose adaptation of the original Garou: Mark of the Wolves originally released for the Neo Geo by SNK. This game is a fighting game with sprites stylized after the Neo Geo Pocket Color fighters from SNK, with Rock Howard and Terry Bogard in his Garou outfit being obvious standouts, seemengly made from the ground up just for this game and looking quite accurate to official SNK games (except Rock is blue for some reason). The game itself is surprisingly responsive and enjoyable for a bootleg, command inputs work consistently and it feels satisfying to hit your opponents. You face off agaisnt all the other 7 opponents and then 3 recolors in order to reach the end.
Game balance is fine with a single exception. Rock Howard's Hard Edge (QCB + A) move deals SO MUCH damage on block, it basically makes the character busted under the right circumstances. Kim Dong Hwan (or DANG as he's called in-game for some reason) can do something similar with one of his moves, but Rock can deal more damage and its more consistent.
What this TAS consists then is to abuse Rock's Hard Edge while manipulating the AI opponents to deal as much damage and beat them as fast as I possibly can. I did my best to manipulate the AI for them to block as much as possible, sometimes having to counterattack when they want to attack me. Some rounds I have to block attacks, others the opponents block the entire round which is what I want to see, though that only happens like twice in the whole TAS and then I'm almost one hit short of knocking them out sometimes. Hopefully I did a good job.
AI manipulation could be better at points, but the AI seems to react differently depending on which frame you start the round in any fight, basically depending on RNG or something like that.
Hard Edge spam could be more consistent too if both my and the opponent's position were exactly right every time.
Special Thanks
- To the poeple who dumped the ROM of the game and the people who maintain the Bootleg Games Wiki.
- To Matt McMuscles and Maximillian Dood (also you, Mr. Sakurai) for getting me into the Fatal Fury series.
- And you for watching and reading this.
slamo: Claiming for judging.
slamo: The run seems fine; the gameplay is repetitive but your strategy seems like the fastest one. This game meets our standards for bootlegs because it's complete and is an original game. The ROM used is a "Fixed" version that apparently has the copy protection removed, but the "Raw" version doesn't work properly in Bizhawk so this is the best usable version that we've got. Accepting.
