90's fighting games top 5- Number 2- Nintendo steps up to the big boy plate

Dispite all of the SNES limitations, this game still rocked.

Could she stick those things up any higher?
Nothing quirky to say here. Just look.

Killer Instinct

1994 (95 for the Snes release)

Rare, Nintendo and Midway (arcade distributor)

Ever see a line at an arcade machine? Then you most likely didn't go to arcades in 1994 or your only 10 years old right now. The arcade is dead and gone but Nintendo along with Midway was a brutal force during its golden age. Now you walk into an arcade just to see 5 displays of Dance-Dance-what-the-fuck-EVER!

In 1994, Mortal Kombat was two-year-old news, MKII was turning into the same after some months and Street Fighter's inability to make a sequel and not just another damn remake kept plenty fighting game fans bored silly. MK3 was on the horizon and gamers needed something to hold them over, ANYTHING. Nintendo was listening and grouped up with MK distributor Midway and released a fast, furious, and arcade-friendly opus that speed hungry adrenaline junkies could not get from MK and Street Fighter 2.

Nintendo had -and still has- a knack for kiddy games (but still damn good games). Previously Nintendo had made Donkey Kong Country with Rare and with the help of well animated action and well polished graphics they produced a fun (but also overrated) side-scrolling platformer. DKC was fun but it was really for the little guys around the 10-13 age bracket. Nintendo's next game would aim for a more grown-up crowd, and why not? Nintendo was in its prime and was at the time working on a new game system that would need one HELL of a launch title.

KI was a total surprise; a fighting game with pre-rendered sprites and some beautiful 3d backgrounds that all screamed high art. The game looked as if it was all done in real time 3d graphics but that was merely an illusion of the Rare software genius within. This game also had sound and music that pounded on your ears as you played. The fighting style of KI was the best blend of MK's hard hitting brutality with SF2 combo driven skill. The characters looked either cool or in one case... damn sexy, each fighter having a uniqueness that set the group apart from SF2 and MK (with the exception of one ) The announcer's voice sounded like Darth Vader filled with steroids and the piece of spice made this game feel so... alive (for lack of a better word).

To fight and win in KI you needed fast hands and fingers. This game is very combo-based and relies on your ability to chain attacks together, so no more jumping around and kicking unless you plan to follow it with some specials and other hits. Doing this will set off chain reactions that will cause multiple knocks to your opponent. What made it fun was that your opponent- CPU AI or player 2- could do just the same and release a humiliating barrage on you. Not all hope is lost, you could perform a 'combo breaker' and escape with less damage and give your middle finger to what could have been a hollow defeat. At the final moment of a match the dead player would sway in pain and in MK tradition you could vanquish them with a 'Danger move' which was a KI fatality. Another good way to victory was dwindling the last sliver of the opponent's health with a 24 hit "Ultra Combo!" (hearing the announcer yell that out always gave me a chubby).

This all happens so quickly and its handled so well-no round 1 or 2-no stopping. If someones life bar is drained for the first time, they hit the ground and wake back up with a second and final red life bar, and the other player doesn't start from full. This gave the game its intensity that MK 1 and SF didn't have. What kind of fight STOPS when the player keels over for the first time? That's stupid, just get up and dust yourself off and kick his or her ass. This was a fighting game without the 'referee'.

The character line-up was a diverse and well designed lot. Each of them having their own background and story:

B. Orchid: (my personal fave) The bad-ass babe of the game, armed with 2 clubs that looked like mini Star Wars lightsabers. Also armed with a great rack and a killer ass. I have no shame and I'm a chronic pervert, oh well.

Spinal: A skeleton with a shield, sword, and an annoying laugh.

Fulgore: A robot built for hand to hand combat. Has wolverine-like wrist claws.

TJ Combo: The total rip off character of this game, and total racial stereotype of a Mike Tyson-esqe boxer. This guy manages to rip off SF2's Balrog and Mike all in one fell swoop.

Cinder: A man on fire, like the Human Torch from Fantastic 4. Cool idea, really.

Glacius: The yin to Cinder's yag. An alien/man made of ice and liquid. Not a pallete swap, however.

Chief Thunder: Native American armed with 2 tomahawks. Cool character beside being another damn stereotype. Hmm Maybe game makers in those days didn't know that Blacks and Indians aren't all boxers and rain dancers.

Jago: Ken and Ryu-esque karate man. Not much else to say.

Saberwolf: Werewolf that fights. Not done before so I'll give it a thumbs up.

Riptor: Human-dinosaur hybrid that fights. This was 1994 and the movie Jurassic Park helped us believe in using DNA to fuck with mother nature, so why not put dinosaur and human semen in a blender and see what pops up.

Eyedol (the boss): A two headed cyclops. One eye on each head. So he still has 2 eyes... but 2 heads with only one eye on each (am I clear?). He fights with a large club that looks like an antique lamp and has these odd looking goat legs (I guess you can't always have cool characters 'across the board').

The backgrounds each reflected the characters personality and tell us that these events take place in a dark and futuristic world. Orchid fights on top of a skyscraper and Cinder fights on top of a tower in the desert. Some levels presented us with 'pit' like finishes which enabled you to knock each other off of the tower at the end of a match, giving you a cool look at the soon to be dead fighter falling and hitting the pavement below. Riptor fights in a room littered with spikes and blood spilled all over, Glacius's world looks like Antarctica with an 'Asian temple' look. All in all, very imaginative.

The other plus brings us back to sound. Each level had a soundtrack of really good metal, techno, and hip hop music. The music and sound to KI was SO good that when it was released on the SNES the game came with a music CD in the box of all the songs. This game WON and conquered in the sound, graphics department.



But it wasn't all wine and roses.

KI's story was sooooooo... written after the game was complete.The plot to this game revolved around an evil company called 'Ultratech' that every year, holds a tournament to test out its products and even kill of few of its critics and traitors while at it. Riptor is a product of Ultratech as well as Fulgore. Orchid is a spy looking to dismatle the company by pretending she is a Secretary that just HAPPENS to carry two lightsticks that kill. Saberwolf is really just a man in a wolfs body looking to get a cure for his affliction of werewolf-ism. Eyedol is... fuck I guess something that Ultratech did for shits and giggles. The point, is the story wasn't the point.

Action was the point and it was there. This game took arcades hostage and created the aforementioned 'lines'. I played this game at arcades and eventually on its SNES release. I remember being beyond excited to get this game, and Nintendo broke a rule by putting the game into a black cartridge shell, so that made us ALL believe that KI was a hit not even Mortal Kombat got this much great marketing. In the pile of grey shells of games like Street Fighter 2 and MK 1 and 2, that black KI cart catches the eye.



However, this was also the game that showed the Super Nintendo it's age. The SNES version was still good, but it was SEVERELY cut back from its arcade counterpart. No full motion videos, tacked on endings, fewer frames of animation, and dumbed down sound. I expected all this and even at the age of 13 I was grateful that Nintendo TRIED to deliver a great translation. Even the Game Boy had a KI release, and boy did it suck, theres no need to cram 10 pounds of awesome in a 1 pound bag. At this point we now started to see what our precious Super Nintendo WASN'T capable of, and it was a revelation to Nintendo and the world that a new system needed to be made. The even bigger disappointment was that the N64 didn't have a KI release until later in that consoles life and was still lacking what the arcade had; No videos, weak sounds all because of the N64's cart media. We just couldn't win.

KI had a sequel and it came and went shortly after the success of the first game. It was nothing special. New characters that no one remembers and cool characters from the first game taken out for no reason. As of writing this article I read in my research that a third KI was in the works for the Xbox 360 but Rare has since cancelled it. That REALLY blows, a gaming system like the Xbox 360 could literally reinvent the KI series, full 3d real time graphics, surround sound in 5.1. I guess it just comes down to the fact that sometimes its best to leave well enough alone, or in this case just let it die. Wow... A great game started with a bang ends with a whimper. KI 2 was even beaten by the weak ass MK3 in terms of popularity. That makes this loss even more pathetic.

Killer Instinct was awesome and almost made it to #1 on this list. If this game wasn't so 'flash in the pan' it might have been higher. The industry can learn from this, if you make a sequel, you have to top yourself, not repeat. The success of KI was enough to get Nintendo to the front and really push the N64 system, but the surprise to me the writer is that this series never really blossmed to "Franchise" levels. No major merchandising, no cartoon on Saturday morning and no big budget movie (thank God Nintendo learned their lesson from the Mario Bros movie) .

Go to almost ANY emulator site and you'll find out that the arcade MAME version of KI is not so easy to find and even harder to put together and program, . I guess this was done on purpose , but it still sucks. I guess I need to win the lottery and buy the cabinet. For now I'll treasure the memory of how Orchid could kill off her enemy by opening her shirt and flashing her fun-bags at him.

Diamonds and Dogshit Report- Dogshit- Nintendo starts seeing red

I am currently writing an article about Sega and its rise and fall. Ultimately that piece of writing will be a truthful and brutally honest commentary on HOW that company blew it and now no longer makes consoles. But in the process of writing that, I thought: Nintendo has had some stinkers too. The Power Glove was Nintendo's worst peripheral back in the 80's, so bad that even its 90 minute movie/commercial starring Fred Savage (The Wizard) couldn't save it. That however was the 80's and I hadn't gotten into gaming then. Nintendo enjoyed a prosperous and well deserved place at the top back in the 1990's with the SNES and its Gameboy systems, which gives good reason that they would take some risks, try to cash in on a trend, and then lose.

Nintendo loves to try something new weather its needed or not. Lately they've released the Nintendo DS, a portable with 2 screens, one of them being a touch screen, not to mention N64 graphic and sound capabilities. So far that has been a success, even as currently the Game Cube is eating the dust of the original Xbox and PS2, Nintendo manages to keep afloat with its portable market. But Nintendo can't afford to fuck things up now, drastic moves in the wrong direction will send them into bankruptcy and force them to join the ranks with Atari and Sega as 'failed console companies'. As far as consoles Nintendo only has 1 failure: The Virtual Boy.

In the 1990's Virtual Reality was this buzzword that hit the gaming world by storm and it seemed to have one common element that would make an ordinary game seem like a virtual game: a screen inside a pair of large goggles. If the screen was 2 inches away from your face than you suddenly were IN the game. Games like Doom and Hexen gave us a new genre called the 'first person shooter'. This was a time when people didn't want to just SEE Mario beat king Kuppa they wanted to BE Mario and beat king Kuppa. Trouble is, console makers really didn't know what to do with VR. Sega had a cool VR system in the works but it never made it past the prototype phase. Even the Atari Jaguar had a VR system planned as a cool peripheral. Nintendo ran with this concept and the inventor of the Gameboy, Gunpei Yokoi dreamed up a product.

The VB came out in 1995 and on the outside this thing looked pretty,... interesting. VB looked like a pair of huge googles mounted on the tripod. This device has some interesting hardware inside, such as a 32 bit processor. Another thing that made this thing unique was its ability to play a different set of graphics in each eye creating an illusion of 3d, similar to the effects used to make 3d glasses. The controller was pretty innovative being that it was made to be switchable between left and right handed. Not a horrible idea in all, but it came with one HUGE flaw. Red graphics!

This thing only had 2 colors in its display, red and black. Games like Mario Tennis on this machine gave the impression that our favorite Italian plumber was playing tennis in Hell. Red Mario hitting the red ball to Red Yoshi, under a black sky. That is tennis in Hell, not the usual bright happy place Mario dwells and roams. I could mention other games but honestly this was all I had played. I remember displays of this thing set up at Blockbusters. I was so young at the time and even then I was soooo not impressed. I played about 2 minutes of Mario Tennis before my eyes began to hurt a little. This machine had a manual that was loaded with warnings telling kids to not play this thing for more that an hour and take breaks to rest your eyes. Hmm I wonder just HOW they found out that this thing was dangerous to eyes?

Maybe it was timing, maybe it was lack of software, maybe it was the red screen, or fuck perhaps the fact that after an hour your got a headache while using this thing, truthfully this thing has all this to blame for its failure. The price didn't help either: $169.00. A Game Boy with its green and white screen didn't cost more that $40 at this point in time, and at least that thing didn't cause eye damage unless you played the fucking thing in the dark. Few games were made for this machine. None of them really took advantage of the 'virtual' concept of putting you IN the game, most of the games just showed you a Viewmaster effect, but in motion. In less than a year Nintendo stopped pushing this device and began focusing a little more on the N64. Smart move.

Gunpei was fired after this, which is really a sad loss. The Game Boy he invented was THE system that made the industry rethink of the handheld market as something to take seriously. In 1997 he was killed in a car accident after losing his job at Nintendo.

Was it fate? If it is then that makes the Virtual Boy responsible for murder. The Jaguar sucked, but the worst of that fallout was that a few designers and programmers might have had to go look for another job. Nintendo now has hand helds that rock and all of them are made to the standard that Gunpei had always wanted, for example he had origionally said 'no' to a color version of the Game Boy until technology was made to make the battery life longer. This is one the reasons color game units like the Sega Game Gear didn't hold a great fight against the 'green giant' Game Boy. Gunpei is rumored to have said that the VB wasn't to his liking when it was released and was rushed out too early, and he was absolutely right. A year after his death the Game Boy color came out and the rest is history.

I make trips to antique shops and Goodwills alot. I'm looking for things like this. I don't know why but I love a loser. I can't really explain it. Oh well.

Diamons and Dogshit Report 2 - A Diamond- Earthworm Jim

No cows were actaully hurt while making Earthworm Jim

For God's sake keep Pete safe! (Pete is that purple dog)
1994's Extreme Sports Event: Jim versus Major Mucus
Art that is silly and at the same time, serious.

No super-space-cyber-suit would be complete without undies!

Earthworm Jim

Shiny/Playmates/Virgin

1994

Somewhere between madness and genius there is a thing called 'brilliance'.

Earthworm Jim was madness, brilliance, genius and art all thrown into one package, and it came in the form of a run-and-shoot platformer in 1994. EJ was a grossly funny cartoon brought to life in a video game and its purpose was to take all the things that made up video gaming culture and subvert them as part of a parody. Along with its unique acerbic attitude toward games in those days, it also put a new character in the rankings of gaming, right next to Mario and Sonic. This game made you laugh and challenged you at the same time (lets put a strong emphasis on the word 'challenge').

The story to EJ was as odd as it was ludicrous, and that might have been done on purpose. The main character that you play as is the result of an accident, according to the games story. The games story (in short) tells us that a 'Ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit' falls from space onto earth, and landed onto an earthworm. This earthworm ends up crawling inside of the suit and mutating from an ordinary crow-fearing, dirt-eating worm into a super intelligent heroic super earthworm named Jim. Now this story wouldn't be complete without a villain and it has one named Psy-crow, who is a funky looking (duh) crow that wears a suit similar to Jim's and he wants Jim's suit instead (I guess Jim's suit really rocks). What Psy-Crow also wants is to kidnap Princess Whats-her-name (that's the characters name, I'm not making that shit up). But Whatever, few of us actually cared about the story, we cared about the game.

What made the game so fun was the 'look'. The world in EJ was weird and cartoon-inspired from top to bottom, in fact that's what I digged about this game the most. I was and I am still an art nut and EJ always impresses me. The game was designed by a cartoon vet Doug TenNapel. The art and design of EJ looks like it takes creative points from Ren and Stimpy and the muscled character designs of Simon Bisley. Jim has his earthworm body sticking out of the collar hole of the muscular upper torso'ed yet skinny legged suit, It looks absolutely ridiculous, but its supposed to look silly, its a cartoon. Jim has the ability to pull out his head and 'whip' at things like enemies and hooks conveniently placed in level for which Jim could use to swing himself around. This game of course isn't complete without Jim being armed with a gun. His gun shoots what looks and sounds like regular bullets but it looks like a 50's inspired ray gun with an antenna tip, but as odd as it looks, its a lot better than Jim using his head as a whip. Princess-whats-her-name has a Betty Boop in a full-bodied 'bubble bee suit' look. Its very hard to describe and honestly I feel stupid even trying to right now, because if you are reading this right now there's a good chance you played this game and you remember all this, but its always fun to look back (that is the point of this blog).

These characters animated better than anything else in those days thanks to EJ being published and made on a very beefy 24 meg cart which was rarely heard of in platformers or any game for that matter. The gaming world called this motion technology 'Animotion' but I'm sure that was just fancy talk for 'We worked on this game harder than any other have before us'. The work showed and after awhile during playing, you just forgot it was a game and began to control a VERY fun cartoon. More impressive was also what was going on BEHIND and AROUND Jim.

The world of Earthworm Jim was a diverse place, each level looking and playing different and unique from the other. The first level called 'New Junk City' takes place in a cartoon version of a junk yard, with crows flying around and pecking at you and guard dogs nipping at your heels. Another level called 'Down The Tubes' takes place underwater inside tubing that looks like a hamster tube maze and get this; you also get to ride a hamster at one point! No two levels look the same at all and that was a surprise back in those days, usually we'd see the same brick walls and the same trees over and over (*cough* Mario! *cough*) but not here. Another plus was that you were never moving JUST left to right, EJ had you moving zig-zag style from one area to another, up, down, all around and even forward away from the screen into space like on the 'Andy Asteroids' levels.

This was also part of the challenge, no longer could you just run and jump. You had to think, be creative and figure out things. This was more of a challenge for players because NOW they had to really look at the levels and see for themselves just WHY we couldn't get that green diamond in 'What The Heck' to levitate Jim from point A to point B. Gaming magazines must have been in good business in 1994 because plenty of us were thumbing through EGM's and Gamepro's trying to get tips on how to help Jim save the universe. Strategy guides could never help us perfectly time and help us swing Jim around from hook to hook on certain levels and gamers had to find a pattern to go by and never, ever stay from it. It was a challenge but never so frustrating that we had to fling our controllers into a wall because we died 100 times a level.

A game that is designed by a cartoonist deserves and requires cartoon-ish sound. If you thought Hanna Barbara had some sound effects that were unique then your still right, cause EJ had a sound effects cache that was familiar and nostalgic, even in those days. Jim's voice samples (done by creator TenNapel) sounded like he had a funny southern twang, but was a hillbilly that was trying too hard to be cool. Whenever Jim said "Groovy" I giggled, it was funny. Hit a speed orb in Andy Astroids and you'll hear Jim scream "Whoa NELLY!",- goofy as Hell. The music ranged from serious rock sounds, to backwood-sy banjo shit and the 'What The Heck' level had elevator music that was interrupted by rampant screams of unseen victims being held prisoner in the land of 'Heck',- totally goofy. The sounds of EJ was a layer of video gaming art that before then was sometimes overlooked or just took a back seat to the games visuals. This was 94' so we'd better hear something better than 'Doinks' and 'Pings' like in Mario.

The result was good. The game was fun and great sales of the title followed. A lot less was sacred in a game now. You could now use a video game as a good medium for comedy. This was really the first successful 'comedy game' and this game had a blast making fun of other games that were in the same vein. It was a gross out game as well, seeing that one of the enemies of EJ was a anthropomorphic ball of snot named Major Mucus, but it was all in good fun,... what kid doesn't pick his nose?

Was anything wrong with EJ? Yes, it got famous. Jim spawned merchandising that was ranked next to Mortal Kombat and Mario. Everything from action figures to a Saturday morning cartoon came out from the success of Earthworm Jim. The inevitable yet predictable sequel was good, but lighting didn't strike twice and honestly I didn't like it as much. Other games have been made but the fact that I can't remember any of them is a bad sign (I even know all the names of the Full House line-up). The only cool EJ plug I liked was his cameo appearance in Clayfighter 63 and a 3/4 (to bad that game sucked). But the original EJ was a gem and it came at a time when most of us thought that platformers were on the way out. Earthworm Jim revived a genre that was getting its ass kicked by the 'Fighting games' that ruled in the 90's and showed that an old dog like the 'platformer' could be taught new tricks.

Years later, TenNapel moved on after EJ to do the game 'The Neverhood' that had a sequel to it called 'Skullmonkeys'. Skullmonkeys was a stop-motion, clay-mated platformer on the PS1 that really felt like Earthworm Jim, even though it looked NOTHING like it. I was so sure that it was made by the same creator even at that time, so its good to know that I was right about that when I did my research JUST before writing this article. I also think I should add that because of that revelation I now see that art is easy to find and easy to recognize. Video games really don't get a lot of credit for artistic achievement even today and its not fair.

But that's a different subject for a different time.

90's Fighting Games Top 5 - Number 3 -SNK's most expensive experience

A samurai fears nothing, not even lamps and trees!

Trash talk BEFORE it was ok to swear in video games,... and now you know why they allow it these days.
The Snes version's 'zoomed out' look. Im afraid to make a Genesis screen shot. The fight nust be VERY intense just look at that excited (and symetrical) 'band' behind them.



Samurai Showdown

SNK 1993

Takara 1994 (for console releases)

Everyone seems to be fascinated with Japan. Not so much the technological metropolis that we all see today but the 18th century era that is lovingly translated and romanticized in films and books. The film 'The Seven Samurai" is a classic film and has made people believe that Japanese samurai culture is dangerous, attractive and yet still noble. Its the perfect background and concept for video games.

Samurai Showdown succeeded while other samurai games fell because Showdown simplified everything that we loved about Samurai's:

Their showdowns!

Now before I make things sound stupider let me explain. Ever see a kick ass samurai film? like say, Seven Samurai, or Duel to the Death? Name ANY Martial arts film and the most memorable thing is the fight scenes. When the gloves are off and the swords are unsheathed you forget things like the 'story'. SNK gave the action junkies what they had wanted, and threw everything else overboard. This game could have been a platformer 'beat em up' where you had to walk around and battle the SAME fucking guy OVER and OVER again and meet a cool unique boss at the end, but the most expensive game system maker in the world wasn't going to bore the masses.

The game still had a story and a decent one at that. I really thought that the story involved 1 man named Haohmaru on a quest to test his skills and see how mighty of a samurai he really is, but in fact SNK had written a story for this game and it involves the said samurai as well as a slew of other warriors around the world on a quest to stop the malice and plagues of an evil warlock named Shiro Tokisada Amakusa. OK whatever, it didn't say ANYTHING like that when I turned the game on and the main point of the game was the showdown. This game seemed to present itself with a main character that had a personal test to give himself by beating the asses of every big showoff in the world, not saving the world from some kind of danger. The thing that gave the world of SS its beef was the setting; 18Th century. The days before we would see fighting games with hovercrafts and robots in the background.

SNK loaded this game with great looks. Every character looks bad ass and animates as smooth as silk (at least on the arcade and NEO GEO systems), this game follows a lot of the hand drawn Street Fighter 2 styles but doesn't blatantly rip that style off. Each character looks unique. Every fighter has a weapon that reflects their personalities; swords of all kinds, blades, broadswords, samurai swords, giant hooks, gloves with blades on them, you name it. Each fighter had their own background that reflected their persona, like the character Earthquake who lived in a prospecting area of 18th century Texas, or Galford. a Frenchman that lives a life of luxury which means he has to fight in a castle. We see plenty of Asia; most especially, feudal Japan, which always is romantically charged and beautiful to see in games.

The style of fighting in SS is very fast paced, kinda like what Street Fighter 2 games tried so hard to do but with little success. The actual fighting consists of you trying to unleash ultra-hard special attacks that maim your opponent, which was satisfying when finally pulled off. Sometimes you could link some moves together and form combos but there was no credit for that. The motive in SS is to kill and if you had to roll the d-pad or -joystick up your ass to do it, then do it, because seeing that power move executed and your opponent taken down because of it is just too damn sweet. These powerful attacks were not like ordinary special moves they were 'fatality'-styled, they were used after a long battle ensued and your character or the other finally got too pissed off to take any more crap. This is the reason some people call these 'desperation attacks'.

Samurai Showdown was fun. Arcades had a good run with this game and if any arcades still exist there is a SS game still there from when they got that cabinet in '93. SNK's Neo Geo released this gaming experience home on a 118 meg monster sized cart and later other ports were released. The SNES had a decent version, and Sega had... an adequate version. This game also helped the 3do stand a little longer when SS was made for it, but even a 32 bitter like the 3do couldn't hold much of a fight to the arcade version. SNK makes BIG games even if the game itself is small and short, because of the details and action that SNK bleeds over into making a game. This attitude gave SNK the drive it needed to make the NEO GEO but that console would cost gamers $699. But hope was in the air for Genesis and SNES owners, but it was a hollow hope.

On a NEO GEO, a system with top-of-the-line arcade guts inside it, SS played with great quality and 60 frames per second of action, with no hitches. SNK's system was a powerhouse for its day (even today too), and all those bells and whistles came with a huge price tag. So when normal people on a budget want a big shot game then companies work to try and put hundreds of megs from Neo Geo cart games into a small SNES or Genesis cart that might only be able to handle 24 megs at the most. The result in regards to SS was not as good as people wanted. The great 16 bit giants had very 'chopped down' versions of the Showdown that really weren't up to the standard that people saw in arcades. SNES didn't have that cool 'camera zoom' effect so the characters were small, had fewer frames of animation and the games sound was... sub-par, The Sega Genesis version had the Earthquake fighter missing and horrid sound and graphics. Another big gripe was due to Mortal Kombat making bloody waves of controversy, Samurai Showdown had none of the blood that was in the arcade versions which is ridiculous because SS kept the blood amounts low, you very rarely saw it! One of the tamer fighting games out had gotten censored all because of 1 game that went too far. The 16 bit home releases of this game were good tries anyway, I guess you can't have it all.

But this embarrassment keeps this series down and also puts Samurai Showdown in the middle of the list and not any higher like it should have been.

Showdown wasn't a phenomena, though MANY sequels exist that blow this game away. This game was HUGE in Japan and was a great SF and MK alternative for people in the US. There wasn't a big movie, and not much merchandising behind the series (none that I've seen, anyway). Maybe you can find a t-shirt here and there, but that might also be just unofficial crap that SNK would sue over if given a chance. It's nice to see that SNK didn't try so damn hard. If you had the money back then, you could buy a NEO GEO and enjoy the games that kept arcades in business for years. But the people at SNK were not going to shove games down your throat, because they only wanted the gamers that were truly serious about the hobby. There are probably better fighting games that SNK made back in the 90's but this was truly great and set the standard that even Capcom would have to adapt to with later fighting games, like X-men: Children of the Atom. Which is why before writing THIS review I was also considering SNK's Art of Fighting, but who really remembers that one?