ACA NEOGEO Samurai Shodown

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local / Online), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Samurai Shodown is a Fighting Game released in 1993 in arcades and on the NEOGEO AES home console, later receiving ports to numerous other platforms. In the current day, this is probably SNK’s second best-known Fighting Game franchise after the King of Fighters games, and this is the first game in the series, with this release of the game on Nintendo Switch coming in 2017.

The original Samurai Shodown had a lot of good things going for it – Good pixel art visuals with strong character designs, a good theme, and some interesting mechanics. However, it was also lacking compared to then-contemporary Super Street Fighter II – its roster had 12 fighters compared to Super Street Fighter II’s 16, it could be a a bit too difficult to pull off special moves consistently, and the hit boxes for attacks were often way off, resulting in attacks that appear to slice completely through enemies but whiff instead.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

While these settings are nice, there’s one setting noticeably absent here that was present in the Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection – the ability to map combinations of button inputs to one button. Given how this series assigns important commands to multiple simultaneous button inputs, this is a glaring omission, and a big point in favor of getting the collection.

In the end, if you’re looking to get this game, you’re probably a series diehard looking to revisit the early days of this franchise, and if that’s the case, I think you’re much better off getting the Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection. It will cost you more than just getting this one game, but you’ll save on buying multiple games in the series, plus it has the better control options and bonus content you just won’t find here. Unless you want the first Samurai Shodown and only the first Samurai Shodown, and don’t mind missing out on all of that, get the bundle instead of this.

tl;dr – The original Samurai Shodown is a Fighting Game that has some good qualities, but clunky controls and hitboxes that are way off both contribute to a game that just can’t stack up to contemporaries like Super Street Fighter II, let alone modern games. Plus, this release lacks control options and bonus content in the Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection. If you’re even going to get this game, you’re better off getting that bundle instead.

Grade: C-

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