Sengoku Densho

Sengoku was the first brawler on the Neo Geo, and boy does it show. While it saw enough success in the arcade to spawn a (much better) sequel almost exactly two years later, it received mixed reviews from critics and couldn't even break the top 10 highest grossing arcade games in its release month in Japan - which isn't terribly surprising considering Street Fighter 2 came out that month as well. 

Early Neo Geo AES adopters who shelled out over $200 for this game in 1991 (that's almost $450 in 2023 money) were also disappointed as they wanted the quality of Capcom's Final Fight at home - and the quality just isn't there. The game has its fans today, but the second game is almost universally praised as the best of the trilogy and the best beat-em-up on the console. The third game in the series came out in 2001 and is largely its own thing. It's pretty far removed from the tone, setting, and gameplay of the first two Sengoku titles.

Sengoku's storyline is mostly gibberish but it at least gives an interesting setting of two time-traveling warriors (one with a cowboy hat) who need to stop a super bad guy and his henchmen from destroying different eras in our history. The specifics really don't matter, but this isn't a fault of the game - most arcade-centric games just need "enough" story give the player a sense of place and purpose. 

Gameplay is simple - A attacks, B jumps, and C opens a menu to allow you to select one of three alternative characters you can fight with. These characters are collected along the way in the first level after you defeat certain enemy types, and they stick with you throughout the rest of the game. 

• Ninja: Projectiles and fast movement.

• Samurai Warrior: Mr. Karate with a pole - strong but slow.

• Armored Wolf: Picture a wolf with samurai like armor - what you're picturing in you head probably isn't far off.

Each character has their own stats and weapons, but they all come with downsides as well. For example, the ninja doesn't have a walking animation - instead he just flips around the screen making it hard to tell where you'll land when you stop. When you swap characters you have 60 seconds before you revert back to your original form. You can swap back to your original form at any time, but the time you've used in your alt forms won't replenish. So, if you change into an alt for 40 seconds then you revert back to your original form, you'll only have 20 seconds left if you change back into an alt form.

Enemies occasionally drop power-up orbs that give you a variety of buffs. Most notably, you can gain a sword to use, and a power-up that lets you dual wield for a bit too. As these passive buffs are timed, so you'll eventually default back to your fists and this is where things go horribly awry. 

The "game feel" of Sengoku is bad - especially if you're coming off of Final Fight which has great "game feel." The concept of game feel is nebulous as many gamers aren't sure of why a game feels off, but they just "know" it does. 2D game feel typically has to do with these very definable parts: hit box and hurt box placement (these are the active parts of a sprite that can interact with another sprite, and the active part that can be affected by the hit box), sound design, key-frames of animation, and other tells that provide tangible feedback to the player. In the case of Sengoku, the hit and hurt boxes are not strategically placed on the sprites making hit detection by the player hard to judge. To make matters worse the key-frames of animation have little impact, there are no special effects on hit, and enemies have no hit-stun when your attacks connect. Unlike most brawlers of the day, there are not any of the auto-combos or other gimmicks you've come to expect out of the genre. It's mostly single strikes and hoping that your fits landed with an evil sprit's face.

Graphics are a mess, honestly. This is easily one of the worst looking early Neo-Geo games. Colors are drab and animations are stiff, sparse, and lifeless. Really, this looks marginally better than a DOS PC game from the era, and that is not high praise. While the second game would see a massive rework of the art assets, this first game is a real let down. I can't even really blame the boring sprite work on it being an "early Neo-Geo game" as titles like ADK's Magician Lord are still quite lovely to play today and that game came out almost a full year before Sengoku! Sound design isn't much better than the graphics as SNK's sound driver for the Neo was still being worked on. 

Listen, Sengoku isn't a complete turd like Legend of Success Joe, and is marginally better than Burning Fight, but it was a let down when it came out and is rather forgettable for modern gamers rediscovering the Neo-Geo library. Despite its commonality in the Neo Geo AES market, it continues to rise in price with both region versions commanding over $300 in the open market. You can pick up an MVS copy for much less, but the Neo CD version is rising in price a bit due to the scarcity of these early cartridge games on the Neo CD platform (which came out in the mid-90's). 

Sengoku did find its way off of the Neo-Geo thanks to Data East with a Super Famicom port (SNES) in Japan. While not a horrible port, Data East took plenty of liberties when bringing the game over to the home market so there are a litany of differences. The Mega CD (Sega CD) in Japan also got a port of the game that is closer to the original but still fails in many ways. This is a shame as Final Fight got an excellent port to the Sega CD just a year later. 

If you want to try the game, pick up for $8 on Hamsters Arcade Archives series on modern platforms. Unless you find a ridiculously good deal, there are better, more important games to get in your AES, MVS, or CD collections well before you seek this one out. While I whole heartedly recommend the second game as an essential purchase for your collection, Sengoku is more of a curio of days gone by that doesn't hold up well 30 years later.