A Must-Buy for Fighting Game Fans

I actually only bought the Samurai Shodown Collection for fun, but then an hour into diving into the sheer amount of content this collection has – and I’m not even talking about the games but the all the extra history and behind the scenes stuff – I realized that I liked this too much to just let it go by without telling you about how great this is, and how every game anthology or collection should do it this way.

If you’re not familiar with Samurai Shodown, it’s a fighting game series that started on the Neo Geo arcade games, usually as one of 3 or 4 titles you could select from. It usually accompanied games like Magician Lord, Metal Slug, World Heroes, Fatal Fury, Puzzle Bobble, and so on. While most of the Neo Geo games are fun to dump quarters into, Samurai Shodown 1 and 2 were what I almost always ended up playing. That classic samurai music, the sound effects when you first drop a couple quarters in – I get the same excitement playing it now that I did almost 20 years ago.

It’s basically a series that takes place during the late 1780s in Japan. Each story is different and there’s usually a single bad guy who wants to bring chaos to the world or rule it or something equally heinous. It’s 1 on 1 fighting like Street Fighter, but the game took a different approach in that the fighting is all weapons based, so it actually feels like a duel. Swords clash, you can get disarmed, stuff like that. Whiffing an attack can leave you opened to getting nailed with a heavy slash that’ll wipe out around a 3rd of your life, and if you time it right in the last round you can kill your opponent, which will results in a hilarious spray of anime-style blood, and while your guy does his victory phrase, the other poor schlub is getting carried off in a straw body bag, KINDA LIKE THE ONE JOHNNY WAS SUPPOSED TO GET FOR DANIEL AT THE END OF KARATE KID. There’s special moves, projectiles, all of the staples of fighting games. Also there’s a lot of tension toward the end of each match as you go from trying to sneak in a hit here and there to being down to your last sliver of health, trying not to just mash buttons to get one last hit in that’ll even the odds or turn the match in your favor, and with all of that going on, I always found Samurai Shodown to be a more exciting fighter to play.

This collection features all 5 of the main numbered entries in the series. The special thing about this one, as far as the included games, is that the most updated version of Samurai Shodown 5 is also included – called Samurai Shodown 5 Perfect – which was never released in the US before. These are all the arcade editions of the games so you’ll get to play them in their original format, original sound, graphics, everything. The only thing that’s missing is that weird looking kid standing next to the machine, looking at you ominously, making you think he might try to play a VS match against you and beat you with his Rainman-like skill. As a side note, when I bought this on the PS4 they included the PS2 release of Samurai Shodown 6 as a separate freebie. As far as I can tell, every character from the previous games was in this one, including some new ones, and it had almost a Mortal Kombat Trilogy vibe to it. Like you could even play as the animals and referee. It was weird but I did enjoy playing it. Just the sheer amount of characters in it was so unlike the previous games that it felt almost like some weird mod or homebrew title.

The most fun I had with this whole collection was the “museum” section of the game. Basically you can hop on and pick from the entire roster of characters and change it game by game, and it’ll open up or hide the characters that were in it.

Part of the fun of collections like this, at least to me, is starting at the very beginning, messing around with the first game in the series, then going to each one after that to see what’s changed. You’ll get to see right away how each character’s looks change with each game, or how the gameplay has improved or changed, and by the time you’ve played through several you’ll have your pick at your favorite one. This was a blast for me since before this was released, the latest entry I played was Samurai Shodown 4, which at that time I had played only the import of on my modded PS1 but had a blast with it. Please note that these are the US releases (where applicable) of the games, so there’s not as much blood in them as the Japanese versions. Which, if you’re a purist, kinda sucks. But them’s the brakes.

Also something that’s fun for purists is that you can switch the regions of the game as well, if you’re interested in checking out the Japanese versions of the titles.

So the obvious stuff is here – you can play single player or versus, and you can also play online if you so choose. I don’t know whether I just picked a crap couple of days to do it but I couldn’t find anybody to play with online, and your options are basically a casual or ranked match and you can adjust the type of connection you’re willing to put up with in order to play. You can also play the game while waiting for one, and that’s always helpful. So all that said, I’m not going to give an opinion on the quality of the online play since I didn’t get to do it. I’m hopeful that the net code is good, or at least better than Street Fighter V which anybody who’s played that is aware that that is a *very* low bar to surpass.

But to me, the most fun I had with this whole collection was the “museum” section of the game. Basically you can hop on and pick from the entire roster of characters and change it game by game, and it’ll open up or hide the characters that were in it. Do you want to see the ways Haohmaru or Galford changed from game to game without playing it? This is the place to do it. On top of that you can browse descriptions and notes from the developers on the games and how they differ from each, there’s concept art that’s *actually* interesting in this one, showing their drawings of special moves and backgrounds, and there’s also lots of different interviews with the original guys who lead the development team. There’s even a section where you can watch high-level tournament play from the last few years. It’s huge, and the first night I had the game I didn’t even play it, I just enjoyed pouring through all of this stuff.

I honestly don’t have any real complaints about this collection. It would be nice to have some kind of training mode for each of the games, but then it makes sense that it’s not in this because these are the arcade releases. Also I’m being nitpicky with this but presently it’s download only and I really wanted a physical edition. I don’t know if that’ll change down the road but stuff like this I like to buy the super deluxe fuck off edition. I don’t know, taking it for what it is, I just don’t see anything really wrong with it, and whether you like this series or not will ultimately decide whether you’ll buy this or not.

So ultimately I think this is an excellent collection and I really hope we see more like this. The games themselves are already fun but when you’ve got this much love put into it to get the original guys back together to discuss how they made them, the ups and downs of making them, and then getting to see all of these changes in the games almost literally side by side, is really special to see. If you were a fan of the games or if you like fighting games in general, then to me this is a must buy. Or maybe I being selfish and I want people to play with online.