Samurai Shodown

"Ah, the beautiful, beautiful mute button..."

In a way, this port of the first installment of an excellent Neo Geo fighting game series did the 3DO a lot of justice. On the other hand, it also made an aspect of the 3DO seem like complete and utter CRAP. Well...if you have a 3DO, you might enjoy owning this port, as long as you can get past it's flaws.

Story: 7
The same story as always. A bunch of fighters are in a tournament, some of them are there to destroy evil, some are there to test their skills, some are there to satisfy their lust for carnage. Ultimately, no matter what the fighter's motivations for entering may be, they have to deal with Amakusa Shiro Tokisada in the final match.

Gameplay: 7
Well preserved for the most part, but the fact that there are only three buttons on the controller means that people who are used to having the traditional scheme (pressing both weak and medium sword/kick buttons together for the strongest attack) will be very disappointed and may not be able to play as well on this port without devoting a good amount of time to adapting. Still, every character is here, not to mention all of their respective special moves.

Graphics: 10
Awesome! This game looks exactly like the Neo Geo! I had no idea the 3DO could do such good 2D until I played this game! Everything is detailed, animated and colored to a T, plus the screen scales when the fighters move away from each other just like on the Neo Geo...

Sound/Music: 5
...but ARRRRRRRRGH! THE SOUNDS AND VOICES! I had to shove cotton balls in my ears to stop the bleeding!! Why am I ranting like this? The voice clips in this game sound even worse than the Genesis version's voice clips. I kid you not. How sad is that, eh!? Well, at least the music is authentic, taken straight from the Neo Geo version and put on CD music tracks.

Control: 7
Like I said above, the crappy 3DO controller with its 3 buttons means you can't do things here like in the original version, but at least the buttons you can use are responsive.

Replay Value: 7
Like most fighting games, you will have fun seeing each character's ending, trying to beat the game on increasingly harder difficulty levels and playing against your friends.

Bottom Line?
Great graphics, great music, horrible effects and voices, flawed control. Well, if you don't mind the missing button and you turn off the sounds, you'll have fun playing this port, which is why I give it a 7.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/01, Updated 01/25/02