Samurai Shodown

released on Jul 07, 1993

In early Japan, a man named Shiro Tokisada Amakusa preaches a heretic religion. Little does anyone know that Amakusa is really a servant of the evil Ambrosia, who took over Amakusa's body. Ambrosia wishes to shroud the world in darkness. Now, choose between 12 warriors (and 3 bonus characters) to fight for the honor of destroying Amakusa, and fulfilling a mission.


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Cool memorable roster however really unbalanced and really does not do much to distinguish itself from other fighting games.

I wonder if this was the first depiction of bifurcation in video games? Representation matters.

Slower than its rivals, but the atmosphere and feeling are nearly excellent

Sempre achei ele mais bonito que Street Fighter 2.

satisfied sigh... you know what, sometimes it feels good, checking out a certain franchise you have never played before. It really does, especially in this case. Through the endless void that is SNK fighting games, there was always going to be that diamond in the rough that, while still very similar to the others available, will manage to do enough for you to where you won’t feel tired and bored, like with others. It’s like when you are at some convention or whatever, you are looking around at all of the things people are selling, and most of them aren’t really that interesting, or they just suck, but then you find that ONE booth, that one booth that has the GOOD shit that catches your eye, and you are just like “Yes, take my money, please.” In today’s case, the game that I am talking about here would be the original Samurai Shodown.

Like with the other SNK fighting franchises that I had checked out at this point, I had never played any Samurai Shodown game before this, but I had always wanted to. Not only because it looked good enough, but it also managed to look just that little more interesting and unique when compared to the others like Fatal Fury or especially with Art of Fighting. So I decided to check out the first game, and yeah, for the most part, it is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a typical SNK fighter, but it manages to add just enough little things to where I ended up having a really good time with it, despite the usual drawbacks being there.

The story is pretty simple for a fighter, where the evil Amakusa is resurrected from the dead by an evil entity, and he starts to spread chaos all throughout the world, so it is up to many different warriors, mostly ones from Japan, to try to take him out, and this is about as basic as a fighting game plot, or ANY game plot, could get, but at least the story is simple at the moment, before it most likely gets way too complicated later down the line. The graphics are what you would expect from a typical SNK fighter, but hey, it still looks nice, and many of the different animations, character designs, and effects are pretty good for the time, the music is pretty good, going along pretty good with each of the fights, and having plenty of music utilizing Japanese instruments, which is nice to hear for this type of game, the controls are mostly what you would expect, but there are now new maneuvers that can be used to take advantage of the gimmick, which I will get into in a second, and the gameplay is what we have all gotten too used to at this point, but with a little more spice in to make it more appealing.

The game is a typical 2D fighter, where you take control of one of 12 warriors that come in various shapes and sizes, take on plenty of different opponents from all around the world, but mostly in Japan, throw out many different kicks, slashes, special attacks, and more to whittle down your opponents’ HP till there is nothing left, gather plenty of different items that will help you out, or hinder you, during battle, and take on several bonus stages between battles to get some more points. Most of this is what you have come to expect, and I wasn’t expecting too much out of it, but the gameplay managed to be fast and fun enough to where I was suckered in by the end. Not to mention, all of the extra features helped me reach that conclusion as well.

The biggest change in this game when compared to all of the other SNK fighters is that everybody has weapons now! All of the characters that you choose from at the start carries weapons that they use, such as swords, spears, orbs of doom, and even things like animals and Freddy Krueger’s knife hand, which are the primary means of combat that you will use in each fight. Hearing this, you may think “Ok, so what? It probably plays just like every other SNK fighter”, and that is where you are wrong!........ sort of. Since you now wield a weapon, you can alternate between hitting opponents with the weapon, or just hitting with your fists and feet. You can also combine actions together to get even stronger hits on opponents, and let me tell you, slicing down my opponent could not feel any sweeter.

What also helps this out greatly is the game’s fighting speed. This game is much faster when compared to the company’s other fighters at the time, with the most effective form of combat being focused on fast and powerful attacks rather than just chaining combos together, and that right there is perfect for someone like me. I have a very small brain, meaning I have never been able to study fighter’s movesets and utilize combos in most fighting games without getting confused as hell, so having a game where you don’t need to worry about that too much is perfect for someone like me. Other features in the game also help make this fighter much more enjoyable to me, such as more story cutscenes that can be seen in between certain matches, and there’s even a random guy who will come by and throw down food and money at certain points to heal you, which is a lifesaver in certain circumstances. But he also throws down bombs too sometimes, so you know, fuck that guy.

If none of that sounds too exciting to you though, then you probably won’t have any reason to want to try this game out for yourself. It is primarily an SNK fighter first, where it features a lot of the same graphical and gameplay style, having the same progression structure, and not having a theme that is too different or exciting from others. In addition to this, all of the usual drawbacks to an SNK fighter are all accounted for here: SNK syndrome, which has bullshit difficulty for a lot of the fights, even if it isn’t that bad this time around, and mistranslations in the dialogue that can be seen in plenty of areas. Although, with that being said, the mistranslations aren’t as frequent here, but instead, the dialogue is just really bad. Seriously, it looks like a 10-year old kid wrote it rather than a video game developer. Unless the person in charge of writing the dialogue at SNK was a 10-year old kid, in which case, that makes a whole lot of sense.

Overall, despite the typical drawbacks that you would naturally find in one of these games, Samurai Shodown is definitely one of the better starts to an SNK franchise that I have experienced so far, and it has me excited to see what else this franchise has in store for me after this… even though it will probably just be more of the same. I would definitely recommend it for those who are fans of later games in the series, or for those who are a fan of other SNK fighting franchises, because everything you loved about those other games will probably be here as well. And hey, in some of the ending cutscenes, they even have Mai Shiranui in there, which is pretty cool. So this means that these games take place in the same universe as Fatal Fury… and Art of Fighting, for that matter. I wonder if this is all leading up to something…………. ah, you know what, it is probably nothing.

Game #460

Stonking version of the popular Neo Geo slice and dice. If we have to focus on the negatives, Earthquake being removed is the obvious. I suppose the speech is the typical muddy Megadrive fare, but the tunes are nice, the minimalist period music works well with the hardware. Gameplay-wise it's top notch, very hard to fault with its pixel perfect collision and timing. The well animated characters do everything they did on the big daddy console, and with six buttons you simply can't go wrong.