Witness the showdown (That is, if you can see them) on the SNES.
Overview
When Samurai Shodown was release, it broke new ground for fighting games by having an interesting twist for each of their fighters: weapons. Now that it had came off a successful run at the arcades, many were pondered what was in store for them at the home release section. As a young boy, I had the privilege of getting the Super Nintendo system version as a birthday gift from my parents.
Now that I'm an adult, I still surprise myself that not only do I still have the same SNES system active from back then, I continually play Samurai Shodown on a daily basis for nostalgia. With that said why don't we go back and examine the good and the bad of what Samurai Shodown was inside the home console of the SNES.
Graphics 7/10
There is where you will see a lot of set backs in this area. First up, there is no zooming effect during the rounds. You are stuck in one view and that's far. How far, you say? Well, everybody is, literally, little people (except, of course, the big man, Earthquake.). Under the wrong television set, playing this on some outdated screen could make them look fuzzy and unappealing to play.
Lots of noticeable details are missing in the stages and fighter's animations. For example, Ukyo's stage will have no fireworks booming in the sky and he won't get chase by his adoring female fans in one of his winning animations. Also, no cutting items in half like barrels or statues. You also won't see the time bonus screen ever either. Sometimes, stages that have moving images of living things (i.e. humans, animals) will have a bug where they stay in a freeze frame for the whole battle and not move until the game accumulates your score after a win.
The biggest fallout is during around the time this version came out, SNES tried to be family friendly, so many games showing blood or gory content would be edited out somehow. Since everybody knew of the decapitations and blood spewing from the arcade version, you would assume they try to maintain some of those traits. On this adaptation, nobody dies. The losers just fall on their backs and slumps over in sadness. The people at Nintendo tried to redeem themselves with the death finish change to the loser having their weapons broken, though you rarely actually see it done. It became strange and comedic scene to those who see it.
Gameplay/Controls 10/10
You will notice some moves, basic or special, doing random insane damage from out of the blue. The POW meter doesn't even need to come into play for this to happen. It's a very eerie situation. The difficulty level in the game isn't all that is crack up to be. Whether you're playing the lowest or the highest adjustment to the AI, you're not going to see that much of a difference, like a few smart counters of slashing by the CPU. The controls, I will say, are superb. Gripping and tapping the buttons are very easy to getting used to and I admit using the controller's L & R shoulder buttons, when hold down, to inflict hard versions of attacks, is a welcome edition to the hack-n-slash fighter on the SNES. It's a nice change to have something other then your thumb on your hand bruising and press in pain.
Sound/Music 7/10
Samurai Shodown's sound bites have been tampered with as most of it has been removed. Missing speeches and music notes won't be that big of a change as there are far more things that make SNES differ from the original. Those that got away were adjusted knowing how the SNES game cart is nothing like the NeoGeo in the sound cards. In some cases, the SNES make some things better. Check out Gen-an's talking and licking his claws, which I prefer more, then his NeoGeo voice had him speaking like a regular guy. The only time I heard anything cut off is when the announcer's get interrupted by Kyoshiro's speech in his second win. The musical essence came off “softer” in hearing. Shoot, even when you listen to Galford's or Earthquake's rocking melodies, it not as heavy. Most impressive is that you can hear everything in Dolby Surround Sound. I tried it many times and it was awesome.
Replay Value 7/10
If you manage to go through the CPU competition without any problems, you can beat the game within an average amount of 30 minutes. The “Count Down” mode really doesn't have anything interesting to hold on to, so there's no purpose for it to really be there. Unless you have Amakusa, who can be unlock to play via code (Sorry, not in one player mode), you can blaze through the mode in no time flat. The two players versus mode is what going to save the day.
Overall 7/10
Samurai Shodown and the SNES…
What is there to say about this combination? Well, Takara did a good job trying to make it as close to the original as possible, even thought they were way too far from meeting that goal, with all the issues they had to deal with. I was happy when I got as a kid and I still have the same feelings for it after all these years. To put in simpler terms, if you couldn't afford the NeoGeo system with Samurai Shodown, just take the easy route. Get a SNES console, but Samurai Shodown at a cheaper price and you won't feel ripped off.
- By Boombada
