Garou Densetsu, the First Fatal Fury: Four Japanese Home Versions and the Code SHVC-GN

In November 1991, SNK released its first fighting game for the Neo Geo: 餓狼伝説 宿命の闘い, Garou Densetsu: Shukumei no Tatakai, known in the West as Fatal Fury: King of Fighters. It was made by Takashi Nishiyama, who had made the original Street Fighter at Capcom, and it started the Fatal Fury series.

In Japan the game came home on four consoles in under three years — the Neo Geo cartridge, the Super Famicom, the Mega Drive and the Neo Geo CD — plus a version for the X68000 computer. Each console version has its own product code, and the codes behave very differently once you paste them into a shop’s search box. This guide lists the four codes, explains why the Super Famicom cartridge is the easiest one to own, and shows which searches actually find it.

• Japanese title: 餓狼伝説 宿命の闘い (Garou Densetsu: Shukumei no Tatakai); in the West, Fatal Fury: King of Fighters
• Original release: SNK, Neo Geo arcade on 25 November 1991; the Neo Geo home cartridge followed on 20 December 1991 — NGH-033
• Super Famicom: Takara, November 1992 — SHVC-GN, the cheapest and easiest to find
• Mega Drive: Sega, 23 April 1993 — G-4100
• Neo Geo CD: SNK, 9 September 1994 — NGCD-033
• In the catalog: only the Mega Drive row carries its code, so search Kataban by title

What is Garou Densetsu: Shukumei no Tatakai?

It was SNK’s first head-to-head fighting game for the Neo Geo and the first entry in the Fatal Fury series. You pick one of three fighters — Terry Bogard, his brother Andy, or their friend Joe Higashi — and fight your way through a tournament towards Geese Howard.

Two ideas set it apart. Many stages have two lanes, a foreground and a background, and fighters move between them. And when a second player joins during a single-player fight, the two players first team up against the computer opponent, two against one, before they fight each other. After every second match comes an arm-wrestling bonus round.

Which Japanese home versions are there, and what are their codes?

• Neo Geo ROM cartridge — SNK, 20 December 1991, NGH-033. The arcade cartridge for the same board is NGM-033
• Super Famicom — Takara, November 1992, SHVC-GN
• Mega Drive — Sega, 23 April 1993, G-4100
• Neo Geo CD — SNK, 9 September 1994, NGCD-033

For the Super Famicom date, most sources give 27 November 1992; the Media Arts Database records 25 November. An X68000 computer version by Magical Company also came out in Japan in 1993, but the catalog has no row for it.

Kataban’s catalog comes from that database, and only its Mega Drive row carries a code (and a barcode). The Neo Geo, Neo Geo CD and Super Famicom rows have none, so searching SHVC-GN or NGH-033 on this site returns nothing (checked 14 September 2026). Search by title instead — more on that below.

Why is the Super Famicom version the one to buy?

Price and supply. On 14 September 2026, Suruga-ya had the Super Famicom cartridge in stock at ¥470–¥3,590, with marketplace copies from ¥200 (54 used listings). The Neo Geo cartridge was ¥47,600 (marketplace from ¥19,120), a Neo Geo CD copy listed as in fine condition was ¥11,200–¥19,200, and the Mega Drive version was sold out at Suruga-ya itself, with marketplace copies from ¥980.

It is not the arcade game, though, and it is worth knowing what you are buying. Takara’s conversion drops the two lanes for a single one and removes the two-against-one co-op; the arm-wrestling bonus becomes a stage where you punch back flying tyres. In versus mode, the computer-only characters are playable on the second player’s side, and the three heroes can fight a copy of themselves. Japanese Wikipedia calls the controls very poor and says several books treat it as a failed conversion.

If you want the arcade game at home, Japanese Wikipedia describes the Neo Geo cartridge and the Neo Geo CD as essentially the same game — at many times the price. The Mega Drive version, published in Japan by Sega, made different cuts: it removes two opponents, Hwa Jai and Billy Kane, but lets both players pick the computer-controlled characters in versus mode.

How do you search for SHVC-GN?

At Suruga-ya, drop the hyphen. In the games category, SHVC-GN returned four listings on 14 September 2026, and three of them were SD Gundam GNEXT products. SHVCGN, without the hyphen, returned only this game, which Suruga-ya lists as 餓狼伝説 宿命の戦い. The barcode 4904880130528 also finds it. Adding -JPN breaks the search: SHVC-GN-JPN returned nothing. One listing only shows up by title: a cartridge-only entry named 餓狼伝説SFC, with marketplace copies from ¥220, which the title search found and the code search did not.

On Japanese auctions, the code is the cleanest search. Through Buyee, SHVC-GN returned nine listings on 14 September 2026, and all nine were this cartridge; the sellers had put the code in the title. Seven of the nine were listed at ¥380–¥500. The Japanese title plus スーパーファミコン (Super Famicom) returned 429 listings, and only about one in five of the first hundred was this game — the rest were Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury Special, bundles and guidebooks. Here the hyphen is needed: SHVCGN returned nothing, the reverse of Suruga-ya.

On eBay, expect the sequels too. The search this site builds, Fatal Fury: King of Fighters super famicom, returned 55 listings (14 September 2026, from Japan). The first was this cartridge, but eBay’s own game-name filter tagged only 21 of the 55 as the first game, 13 as Fatal Fury Special and 10 as Fatal Fury 2, and several of the rest were strategy guides. Check the listing title for “Garou Densetsu 1” or “Shukumei no Tatakai” — some sellers spell it “Shumukei”.

On Kataban, search the name. Fatal Fury: King of Fighters returns seven catalog rows: the Neo Geo, Neo Geo CD, Super Famicom and Mega Drive versions and the Wii, PlayStation 3 and PSP downloads. 餓狼伝説 宿命の闘い returns six: the same Neo Geo, Neo Geo CD, Super Famicom, Mega Drive and Wii rows plus the PlayStation 4 download. 餓狼伝説 on its own returns 58 rows across the whole series.

Do the other three codes work as searches?

Not well. At Suruga-ya on 14 September 2026, G-4100 returned 2,321 listings topped by racing wheels; G4100 returned five, one of them this game. The Mega Drive barcode, 4974365541002, returned only this game. NGH-033 returned five listings, one of them this game and the rest other Neo Geo cartridges. NGCD-033 returned no Fatal Fury at all. For these three versions, search the Japanese title with the console name — 餓狼伝説 メガドライブ or 餓狼伝説 ネオジオ — and read the listing: Suruga-ya calls the Neo Geo cartridge 餓狼伝説 宿命の闘い(ROMカセット) and the CD 餓狼伝説(CD-ROM).

Garou Densetsu: Shukumei no Tatakai (Fatal Fury: King of Fighters) · 餓狼伝説 宿命の闘い · Super Famicom · 1992 · Takara (タカラ) · SHVC-GN

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp (by code SHVCGN — stock varies) · Suruga-ya.jp (by Japanese title) · Buyee · eBay
Search for this on Kataban →

Thirty-four years later, SNK brought the series back with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves in April 2025. The first game is still where the series begins, and the cheapest way to own a Japanese copy of it is a Takara cartridge, code SHVC-GN.