• Genre

• Similar Games

• Market Positioning

• Technical Profile

• History of the Game

Samurai Shodown is known for being a highly competitive game that requires lots of skill and experience to master it. We say that it is difficult to master game because even though is easy to play it you have a huge variety of in-game combat choices which go from pushing only a button to throwing a hit with multiple button combos.

Furthermore, we think that is a very competitive game because it is a fast-paced game based on one-on-one battles in short time spans. So you got a short period to show that you are better than your opponent.

On that basis, Samurai Shodown is a game made for hardcore gamers due to it is complexity that accommodates to their greater skill and experience.

Among its competence, Samurai Shodown gained a reputation for being a fast-paced game. Moreover, the game was focused more in greater and more powerful kicks than combos, unlike in Street Fighter. Furthermore, Samurai Shodown includes a Fury system. Everytime a character gets damaged, his fury measurer rises up and the character skin turns gradually red. When the fury acumulator is full, the character attack damage gets duplicated.

Samurai Shodown is a fighting game by SNK, known as Samurai Spirits in Japan. This video game genre is based around interpersonal combat between a limited amount of characters in which they fight until they defeat their opponents or the timer expires. The fight matches typically consist of several rounds and takes place in an arena, where each character has differing abilities but each is relatively viable to choose. These types of game are also action games where two on-screen characters fight each other. In Samurai Shodown you have the option to play against the A.I. or another Player.

Samurai Shodown is one of the first games in the genre to use the Zoom Out and Zoom In depending on the distance between characters. This game is also using the common horizontal scroll taking the middle point between the two characters as reference and setting the end of the stage as the maximum camera border displacement. This genre requires knowledge about combos and fast reaction times.

The first games to feature the fighting genre were Heavyweight Champ (Classic fist fighting) and Knights in Armor (Weapon horsed fighting) in 1976, but it was Karate Champ which popularized one-on-one martial arts games in arcades in 1984.

Some similar games of the 90’s with the extra use of weapons are: Last Blade, Time Killers, Kizuna Encounter, Darkstalkers, Guilty Gear, Soulcalibur or Mace: The Dark Age; these last two being the first 3D games of the examples.

The Last Blade (1997) is a 2D fighting game seen as the successor of Samurai Shodown because it similarity of weapons usage. This game is known for having two playable fighting styles at your choice, based on speed and power and an unique attack repel system.

Time Killers (1992) is a 2D fighting game that includes the use of weapons. It is distinguished for its huge amount of violence as fighters could cut their rival arms and continue fighting or decapitate their enemies with special death moves.

Kizuna Encounter (1996) is a competitive 2D fighting game that also includes weapons in-game. There is more diversity in this game as some of the weapons are a boomerang, a ball and boxing gloves. The game is characterized for having a tag system that allows you to change your fighter in-game but the game still ends if one of your fighters gets defeated.

Darkstalkers (1997) is a game placed in a Gothic terror universe. It has got characters based on either different types of monsters, or their hunters with the same concept about 2D classic fighting.

Guilty Gear (1998) is a 2D fighting game characterized for having a heavy metal soundtrack. One of the specialities of these games is that you can land unlimited special moves named Chaos Attacks when your lifebar is at halfway point.

Soulcalibur or also known as Soul Edge (1995) in the first delivery, is a game known for being 3D, they also introduced the concept of throwing your opponents out of the ring to win, in addition to being able to win in the conventional way.

Mace: The Dark Age (1997) is a game known for being the second 3D game, after Soul Edge. It has arenas which are delimited by a terrain that deals damage to any character who goes out of the limits. It also includes an execution move after winning two rounds, similar to Mortal Kombat’s fatality.

There are other games which look like Samurai Shodown but without the use of weapons, being conventional fist fighting concepts like: Fatal Fury, Street Fighter, Eternal Champions, Tekken and many others.

Fatal Fury: King of Fighters (1991) is a fighting game in 2D that features a two-planes system. This means that the player will fight from two different planes so it is easier to dodge attacks. Fatal Fury is also known for including ring-outs when the player loses a round if their fighter is thrown out of the arena.

Street Fighter II (1994) is a one-on-one fighting game characterized for the importance of the combo usage. Street Fighter is considered a pioneer in using combinations of buttons to execute special moves.

Eternal Champions (1993) is a fighting game known for it is history depth, a new method for executing special moves, finishing moves named overkills and training levels where players have to survive to the traps.

Tekken (1995) is a game that would become direct competition over Street Fighter the next few years, with polished animations, special moves and a lot of combos to resolve the fight.

First of all, it is essential to understand how the video game industry was in the 90’s. For the arcades, the 90’s were considered a period of revival after them arcades began to fade in the late 80’s due to advances in home video game technology.

In the year 1990 SNK started its own game creation line linked to the Neo Geo arcade hardware. At first, their games were only available by rent, because SNK thought people would not be able to get the Neo Geo due to its high cost and their arcades were only avaliable in commercial sites like hotel chains, bars, restaurants, … When customer feedback pointed that people would pay $650 to get the Neo-Geo, SNK decided to expand sales to the home market releasing the AES, identical to its arcade version, the MVS. The AES was released the 26 of April of 1990 in Osaka, Japan.

Despite the popularity of the Neo Geo, Capcom became the headliner of the renaissance of the arcade games when it released Street Fighter II the year 1991 for the arcade CP System I, the game that popularized competitive fighting games and raised the arcade to a similar level in which they were at their best,the golden age of video games between late 70’s and early 80’s.

The years 1992-1993 were the best years of the Neo Geo system, in which appeared games like Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown that took advantage of the Neo Geo hardware in playability and graphics in comparison with the first games of the console.

However, the competence for the Neo Geo didn’t stop at the CP System I. At 1993, Capcom released the CP System II that made minimal changes from his predecessor but implied encryption on the program ROM’s to prevent software piracy. Moreover, the success of the arcade games didn’t last long in due to the fifth generation of consoles appeared. Consoles like Sega Saturn, Play Station and Nintendo 64 began to offer 3D graphics, better 2D graphics and sound quality, more RAM,etc. which started the arcade systems fall. Neo Geo decided to release a new edition of their console with a CD format, the Neo Geo CD, in 1994. Even though, it didn’t succeed among the other consoles because it was still too expensive despite only offering 2D graphics.

Neo Geo never evolved nor released a better console, unlike the rest of the industry, the hardware stopped being produced in 1990's, their software in 2004 and hardware maintenance at official sites in 2007.

Samurai Shodown as a game made a great impact at the time. It was awarded as the best game of the year and the best fighting game in 1993 by the Gamest magazine in Japan. It was also awarded with the best album and direction; moreover got second place in best graphics. Furthermore, Samurai Shodown got priced with several awards from the Electronic Gaming Monthly including the best Neo Geo game and fighting game. One year later, it got awarded with the Game of the Year at the European at the European Computer Trade Show.

SNK decided to expand its market and started releasing their games in other video game consoles of the fourth generation and some of the fifth ones. Nowadays, it has become available at the Play Station Network, the Wii Virtual Console and more recently, in the Nintendo Switch. Even thought it’s popularity, the game industry continued evolving and, with the implementation of the 3D graphics and the following releases from the same series from SNK and their competitors, left Samurai Shodown in the background . However, Samurai Shodown still is considered one of the best fighting and arcade game of the history of video games.

We’re going to use Neo Geo AES version technical specifications.

Neo Geo is an arcade system based on cartridges and a fourth generation console dedicated to the reproduction of video games. The domestic version is called Advanced Entretainment System (AES) and the arcade version is called Multi Video System (MVS) where the only difference between the two is that the Multi Video System is capable of loading up to 6 slots in the same machine. Both were executing exactly the same code, the only differences were the aesthetics and the price, being the arcade version more expensive than the domestic. Moreover, the console and the arcade version had different cartridges that made it impossible to buy a cheaper AES game and put it in the MVS.

Motherboard from AES version

• CPU: The main processor is a Motorola 68000 (12 MHz, 16/32 bit instructions) and the co-processor is a Zilog Z80 (4 MHz, 8/16 bit instructions) which is also used as an audio controller.

• RAM: 214 KB SRAM.
  

  • Main 68000 RAM: 64 KB.
    
  • Video RAM: 84 KB (Main VRAM 64 KB, Palette memory 16 KB, Fast video sprite RAM 4 KB).
    
  • Z80 sound RAM 2 KB.
    
  • Battery-backup save NVRAM: 64 KB.

• On-board ROM: 512 KB

  • Zoom look-up table: 128 KB
  • Fix layer graphics: 128 KB
  • Z80 sound: 128 KB
  • 68000 BIOS: 128 KB

Rendering Logic from Neo Geo

More info about Rendering Logic here.

• Display: SNK video chipset allows the system to draw sprites in vertical strips which are 16 pixels wide, and can be 16 to 512 pixels tall. Unlike most other video game consoles of its time, the Neo Geo does not use scrolling tilemap background layers. The Neo Geo sprite system represents a step between conventional sprites and tilemaps.

1. GPU chipset: SNK LSPC- A2 (24 MHz, data bus 24 bit).
2. Display resolution: 320 x 224 px (Aspect ratio 4:3)
3. Maximum sprites on screen: 380
4. Minimum and Maximum sprites size: 16 x 16 px - 16 x 512 px.
5. Maximum sprites per scanline: 96
6. Maximum sprite pixels per scanline: 1536 px

• Colour palettes: There are 2 banks (only one usable at a time) of 256 palettes available. Each palette has 16 colour entries, the first being the transparent index, which leave us with 15 real colours.(made of 16 bit RGB definitions.) The maximum number of colours on screen without timer interruption tricks is: 256 palettes * 15 colours = 3840 (out of 65,536).

NOTE: We found some controversy between different sources of information such as: Neo Geo Hardware Specifications, Neo Geo Programming Manual and Neo Geo Development Wiki. But after analyzing the difference between the result of colours that can be shown on the screen range between 3840 and 4096, we realized that some calculations do not take into account the first colour of each palette since it is transparent, but others do. Our conclusion is to stay with the version that transparent colours are not counted as one more colour on the screen, keeping us with the 3840 version.

• Sound: The onboard Yamaha YM2610 sound chip gives the system 15 channels of sound. The RAM dedicated to the sound/work from the Z80 is 2 KB.

  • Four concurrent FM channels (voices), four operators per channel.
  • Three SSG channels
  • Only one programmable noise channel.

• Storage: The SP-S2 system ROM can handle 8 memory cards sizes from 2KiB up to 16 KiB, but the original SNK-branded memory card was a battery backed 8 bit wide 2 Kib.

• Frames per second: NTSC Aes version its available to show 59.599 frames per second, other versions like PAL AES (50.429) and MVS (59.1856) are below the original framerate.

1. Power consumption is about 8W in original systems and the newer adaptations are about 5W.
2. Console dimensions are 325 mm width x 237 mm depth x 60 mm height.
3. Controller dimensions are 280 mm width x 190 mm depth x 95 mm height.

SNK Corporation was a company from Japan dedicated to video game hardware and software development, successor of the Shin Nihon Kikaku and current owner of the video game's company brand and Neo Geo video game platform. The original SNK was founded at Osaka, Japan, in July 22, 1978 by Ekichi Kawasaki. The first game from SNK was Micon Kit, a ball and paddle game released at April, 1978.

Samurai Shodown was released in July 7 from 1993, known in Japan as Samurai Spirits is the name of a one-on-one fighting game series by SNK. It is considered to be the premier 2D weapons fighter and one of the best known video games created by SNK.

Most of the characters are not samurai in the true sense of the “samurai” concept, the name is officially in katakana, but is alternately written in kanji, with the second character pronounced spirits, to better reflect the game setting.

In an interview with Yasushi Adachi he explained that he was the only one who knew the idea originally started as an action game with various monsters. As the concept evolved, the “remains” of this monsters' game was Gen-an. When he was creating the concept for a monster game, he was contemplating what would sell to a global audience. He ultimately felt that a fighting game with ninjas and samurais, which represented distinctly Japanese characters, would do better than just monsters, so he changed the concept accordingly.

SNK decided to focus into the weapons based style, because they wanted to illustrate the terror of weapon fighting, the impact of fighting with a sword; which are more lethal and dangerous than the convencional fist fighting.

The hardware to play Samurai Shodown were originally the Neo Geo's AES and MVS versions, both platforms released in 31 January, 1990. The Advanced Entretainment System (AES) also known as “Neo Geo” was the first video game console for the family.

Samurai Shodown have lots of ports in several different consoles. Nowadays more versions are appearing. The original one was the Arcade version (MVS) in July 7, 1993 , after that appears the Neo Geo (AES) released in August 11, 1993. Due to the success of the game lots of new versions appeared on the platforms (Port of Samurai Shodown released year): Neo Geo CD (1994), Game Boy (1994), SNES (1994), Genesis (1994), Game Gear (1994), Sega CD (1995), 3DO (1995), FM Towns (1995), Neo Geo Pocket (1998), PlayStation (1998), PlayStation Network (2007), Wii Virtual Console (2007), PlayStation 4 (2016), Xbox One (2017) and Nintendo Switch (2017). All the ports vary in quality, given the individual capabilities of the systems the game appeared appeared on.

After the first release for the AES version of the Neo Geo, the game was edited because it showed too much blood and devastating attacks, represented in a graphical way, cutting the enemies in half. By that time the violence in the video games was very badly criticized, as a result it was decided to censor the game for most platforms.

Chad Okada, considered “The Gaming Lord” at the 90’s, states that Samurai Shodown put SNK on the map and overwhelmed games in the arcades at the time.

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