Samurai Shodown 

By 1993 SNK was hitting their stride on the Neo-Geo. Games that were good but rough plagued the early days of the Neo-Geo as SNKs internal development teams not only struggled to get to grips with the confines of the hardware's specifications, but also to create the types of games that consumers wanted in the early 90's. Due to the wild rise in popularity of the fighting game genre thanks to Street Fighter 2 and SNK's own Fatal Fury, SNK changed up the format of a samurai beat-em-up they had in development to fit the demands of arcade goers who wanted more 1:1 fighting action! After much retooling, Samurai Shodown, or Samurai Spirits in the East, was born. 

When Samurai Shodown launched mid-1993 it was met with immediate critical and commercial success. Not only did this game show off the Neo-Geo hardware in ways arcade goers hadn't seen before, it was different enough from Street Fighter 2 that any claims of "wanna-be" fell directly on the pointy end of Haohmaru's sword. Blades, blood, and high-damage, high-stakes battles were now the talk of the town. If you were a kid in the early 90's, you couldn't get away from the hype surrounding this game. It was in every gaming magazine, it was ported to every conceivable platform, and it was in every arcade's Neo-Geo MVS cabinet. To say this game was SNK's greatest world-wide success to this point is an understatement. It was a massive hit.

While not the first of its kind, Samurai Shodown was the first weapons-based fighting game that had the quality to match the carnage. Big, bold, and detailed sprites lept off the screen in an array of color and exuberant animation that hadn't been seen in a fighting game before. To help accentuate the visual splendor, SNK used the sprite-scaling features of the Neo-Geo to pan the camera in and out of the action the closer the combatants got to each other - much like their 1992 hit Art of Fighting. This small but significant feature lead to wonderfully dynamic and epic battles that focused on the action when in close quarters. Although the character sprites are about half the size of the characters in Art of Fighting, they are still big and chunky enough that they do not look too small when the camera pans out fully. 

Samurai Shodown told a story of samurai and warriors working together (or against each other) to track down and defeat Amakusa Shiro and prevent the resurrection of the god Ambrosia. Loosely tied to actual real-world events, the story of Samurai Shodown is surprisingly deep and worth looking up. While most characters are common tropes from that era in Japan, that didn't mean we didn't have some globe-trotting to do (as was common in most early fighters). From the screen filling villain Earthquake from "Texas" (which didn't technically exist at the time), to the fencing bombshell Charlotte from France, players had a roster of 12 interesting characters to choose from, all wrapped up in a feudal Japanese package with a big, bloody bow. 

Rather than focus on fast attacks and combos, Samurai Shodown is more deliberate in its approach. Counters are the name of the game here, and later games in the series provided further boons upon landing a precise counter slash. Every move, even the lightest attacks, leave you at a disadvantage on block and open you up for potential big damage. Weapons can clash for a button mashing mini-game, and whomever loses the mash-fest loses their weapon. Once you are weaponless your slash attack buttons become a series of punches, and you can even catch your opponents weapon between your hands if you're careful enough and disarm them! If you get disarmed your weapon is not lost as it flies somewhere on the fighting plane and you just need to walk over to it and hit one of your slash attack buttons to pick it back up - with all the risk associated in letting your guard down. 

As with a few other Neo-Geo games, the amount of attack options exceeds the amount of buttons available. In essence, Samurai Shodown is a six-button game in a four-button set up. A and B are light and medium slashes, while A+B does your heavy attack. The same set up is used for the C and D buttons for kick attacks. Every character has at least three special moves that fit both their fighting style and personality. Samurai Shodown does less damage overall than later games in the series, so using a smart mix of normals to keep pressure and specials for damage is what will win the day here. This first game in the series if probably the most "safe" when it comes to damage, so it's easier to take risks here than later entries. 

Players also have a Rage Gauge that sits at the bottom of the screen. While you won't be doing any super moves in this game (that comes with the next game), the more you get hit, the higher your rage gauge goes. When you have a full meter you turn red and gain a significant damage buff. While all characters benefit from being in a Rage state, there are some characters that get a massive increase to damage making some far more dangerous than others like Tam Tam and Earthquake. 

Like anything with blades and blood from the 90's, Samurai Shodown wouldn't be complete without gory fatalities! While a FAR cry from what gamers experienced in the west with Mortal Kombat, Samurai Shodown's fatalities are an automatic part of the gameplay that happen when certain end-match conditions are met. Depending on the type of ending slash you land on your opponent one of three things can happen:

• • Landing a horizontal slash will slice the opponent in half, raining down a shower of items that grant you extra points.

  • Landing a poking slash will cut the jugular vein in the opponent's neck and an long spray of blood showers the screen.

  • Landing a blunt attack or kick will just KO the opponent. 

Oddly enough, SNK would often censor the AES versions of games for the US and European markets. This censorship is dictated by the console's bios chip rather than being baked into the cartridge's rom. This is awesome because every region's version of the game is the exact same. What stinks is that if you own a US console you are stuck with inconsistent and silly censorship - unless you have a Unibios chip and can over ride it. In the case of Samurai Shodown, the blood is white, but the fatalities still happen. 

With Samurai Shodown, we would see the graphic style SNK used in their fighting games to this point begin to shift somewhat. Bold, bright colors are used to make the game really stand out from the rather muted pallet of Street Fighter 2 or the oddly sheen look of SNK's own Fatal Fury series. What we have with Samurai Shodown is a game who's art direction is more in line with popular anime of the day than what came before. As the the 90's went on, this anime inspired look would begin to take over in Japanese developed fighting games. 

The level of detail on the sprites was surprising for the time with smooth animation that fits the personality of the characters well, and even small facial animations that bring to life the characters in ways gamers hadn't seen in the genre to this point. Each backdrop lets the player further explore the personality of the characters, and some of these well-designed backgrounds are some of the most iconic in the genre. Samurai Shodown is a beautiful 2D game full-stop, only bested by the updates SNK's artists made to subsequent games when they had more memory real estate to play with. For a fighting game from 1993, though, Samurai Shodown was visually without peer that year. 

If the beautiful sprite work and simple but satisfying gameplay didn't already grab you, the sound design surely will. Crystal clear and varied voices bring tons of personality to the well drawn character sprites, but the music is the real star here. Using a mix of classic Japanese flutes and strings, the composers inserted heavy metal guitar in many tracks to give this game a unique sound. Other than later games in the series, there isn't one video game I can think of that sounds quite like it. Swords clash and clang with generous use of high quality sound effects, and the samples used to create the music are of similar high quality. Samurai Shodown was a step above in graphic and aural complexity over any other fighting game at the time, and while the entire game is fantastic, the sound design really blew people's minds. It still holds up very well today. Personally, I prefer the cartridge's OST over the CD versions arranged soundtrack, but both are stellar. It's a soundtrack 100% worth a listen to outside of the game. 

Samurai Shodown is a bonified showstopper. While the second game would go on to perfect the ideas laid down in the first game, SNK nailed it right out of the gate with the first one and gave gamers one of the best fighting games of the era. Many fans still site the first game as their favorite Samurai Shodown and favorite Neo-Geo game overall - and that's no small feat considering the Neo-Geo is home to masterpiece titles like The King of Fighters 98 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. That said, even players new to the series will find a lot to love here. It's solid, not over-encumbered with options and systems, and anyone can pick up and play. 

No matter your Neo-Geo hardware choice, Samurai Shodown is one of the cheapest games you can pick up in the modern collector market. On the low end, a complete Japanese AES copy is roughly $50 or so with prices ranging up to the $80 depending on condition. A Western AES copy will be significantly higher, but still less than $250. Both the MVS arcade cartridge and Neo CD versions can be had for less than $50. 

Given the massive and immediate popularity of the game, SNK wasted no time licensing the game out to various development houses to port to the game to the popular consoles of the day. Due to this, Samurai Shodown is one of the most widely distributed SNK games from this era. Like many SNK ports from the 16-bit era, the success of the ports depended on how much time the developer gave the project and the overall power of the console. 

The SNES port is a mess with tiny character sprites and horrible controls, but it does retain some semblance of the sprite scaling effects on the already tiny sprites along with the entire cast. The Mega Drive/Genesis port has larger characters, but is missing Earthquake, has a garish color pallet, and saw even more cuts to animation. The Sega CD port looks significantly better than the other 16-bit ports, runs the arcade soundtrack directly from the disc, and includes more voices. It doesn't control all that well, though. The Sega Game Gear also got a port, but it pales in comparison to the other versions and doesn't play nearly as well as the hyper solid 8-bit port of Fatal Fury Special on the same hardware.

Of all the ports to get, the ill-fated 3DO console got the most solid - with some caveats. While not arcade perfect, it has the full cast, at full size, with almost all frames of animation, and even the sprite scaling feature. The only drawback is it runs at 30 frames per second rather than 60 making it slower than the arcade. As one of the lucky kids with a 3DO in 1994, this is the version I cut my teeth on. For curious retro collectors and SNK fans, most of these ports are actually becoming more expensive than the actual Neo-Geo AES cartridge just because of the console they are tied to. Basically, don't bother with a port and just play the game on one of the numerous other avenues available to you today for just a few bucks if you don't have/want a physical copy on an SNK platform.

Samurai Shodown is not only an excellent game from the era, it is well worth your time exploring today. I would consider this game another "essential" Neo-Geo game for collectors or those interested in the legacy of SNK and the Neo-Geo. The series is still popular today with the latest release being the 2019 series reboot - which is a stellar game in its own right. The AES version prices have long since plateaued for this game, and there are plenty of copies out there in the wild for sale, so I wouldn't worry about getting this game in the short term if you're just beginning your collection - go after the even more excellent Samurai Shodown 2 first if you plan on actually playing your games as it's right around the same value.