Character Focus: Terry Bogard

Since I just did a summary of the Fatal Fury series, it seems appropriate to focus briefly on Terry Bogard, the star and protagonist of that series, and my favorite of the SNK lineup of characters to play. In a KOF playthrough, I almost always turn to Terry first and most, and he's the character I'm most comfortable and familiar with of the SNK lineup.

That said, he's had a lot of changes over time. Not just to his look, but moves come and go in bizarre fashion. Some of his appearances have a move list twice as long as some of his other appearances. For his pretty radical redesigned look, which appeared in Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves and was used as well in King of Fighters 2003 and XI, he didn't have one of his signature moves: Rising Tackle. He's still a great character to play without it, but missing it was very strange.

Speaking of which, Rising Tackle is usually a flash-kick motion to execute, but for some of the later Orochi saga games, and King of Fighters 98 in particular, it was a dragon punch motion. Then it went back to being a flash kick again in 99 and beyond. So weird.

While Terry's initial backstory is that he was driven by the need for revenge against Geese for the murder of his father, Jeff Bogard, he kind of evolved into the voice of cool, chill, laid-back wisdom from the cast; the one everyone saw as a legend, who gave encouragement, etc. Although this may be a weird Japanese-ism, he doesn't appear to have been too smooth with the ladies. Blue Mary obviously had a thing for him, but it doesn't appear that they actually ended up together for long after all, according to Mark of the Wolves anyway, where no mention of her is to be found. Although to be fair, in SNK fighting games, everybody already has a coupled up relationship with someone else, or they never actually seem to close the deal (Art of Fighting 3 Yuri and Robert being the only exception I can think of.)

Terry also is obviously connected to his brother Andy Bogard and his friend Joe Higashi. The three of them are the OG Fatal Fury team from the King of Fighters, also known sometimes as the Italy team, because I guess that's where Andy prefers to live, or something. He's had some other team-ups too, though: in 99 when teams were four people, Mai was on the team, for instance. In 2000 and 2001, it was Blue Mary, but alternate strikers were all over the map: Geese Howard being particularly associated with Terry, for instance (Duck King, Billy Kane and Ryuji Yamazaki being other alternates associated with the team.) In the Ash Crimson saga, the teams got significantly mixed up; Terry's Fatal Fury team in 2003 had Terry, Joe and Tizoc. In XI it was Terry, Kim and Duck King. XIII and XIV were back to the classic line-up.

Because he's been turned into this friendly, laid-back kind of personality, he seems to be friendly enough with everyone on the Fatal Fury roster, and most of the King of Fighters roster, except for overt villains or their henchmen. Billy Kane has evolved over time into being more of a rival than an enemy.

And of course, his closest associated character in recent years is Rock Howard, since after Geese's death, Terry took him in and raised him.

Anyway, I've got some concept art of Terry. His classic look actually has more variations than some realize; in the earliest Fatal Fury game, his jacket was a jacket with rolled up sleeves to below his elbow, not a vest with ripped off sleeves. Later, some of his Fatal Fury appearances had a regular t-shirt under his vest with an actual sleeves, although his classic look is sleeveless. His leather bomber jacket and no hat or ponytail Mark of the Wolves look (sometimes called Wild Wolf) is his most notable alternate, and lots of Terry fans somewhat reluctantly (because it's not classic) admit that they like it better. I'm not reluctant at all about it; the only complaint I have about the bomber jacket look is that he never seems to have his Rising Tackle move. People don't seem to love his KOF XIV look, but it seems like a slightly redesigned variation on his very original look to me.

Anyway, here's some alternate concepts that SNK have developed. Some of them are pretty cool. Some of them are stupid beyond belief.

The classic look to the far left. Next to it is the Mark of the Wolves look, with the addition of a ball cap. All of the rest I've never seen before, but I think that they're actually really good. I'd happily use all of them as alternates.

Some variations on the original Fatal Fury 1 design. they ended up turning into the KoF XIV design below.

The classic look and some really bizarre alternates, below. I actually don't mind that green jacket thing. A kind of male cosplay of Blue Mary, I guess. Blue Terry? I think that it might have been an alternate costume in Maximum Impact 2, but I never played that game. The big belt pouch on the classic is a new addition that isn't a terrible idea. The far right two concepts have ridiculously big belts. But then, so did Blue Mary. The American flag look is ridiculous, of course. The black, gray and red one is... I dunno. I need to think about it to see if it grows on me or not. Probably not, though.

The Mark of the Wolves costume (albeit in a pretty stylized style) along with some of the worst alternatives I've ever seen. What is he, a Vegas performer in the 70s here? A stripper who can't make up his mind if he's going for a cowboy or a fireman persona?

I like the concept of a good alternate, and as the Mark of the Wolves design shows, even a really bold new direction isn't necessarily a bad new direction. However, most of these designs are... not all that great. The top bunch are all designs I could get behind, however. Some of these designs look like what ended up coming out as weird alternates in KOF 2006, which was called Maximum Impact 2 in Japan. In fact, that game is famous for—mostly—the bizarre alternate costumes. Other than that, it was a kind of predictable and boring Tekken clone with some SNK characters.