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?
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