Samurai Shodown

"Woooh! I am a champion! I will kill all enemies with my sword!"

Here's one of the gems that really made you glad you had a Genesis. Samurai Shodown is a great game, and when it came to home consoles it came to all the mainstream systems. I've played them all(except 3D0), and this was the best. It's also the best fighter on Sega Genesis, with Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition being second and Eternal Champions being third.

Story; 5.
Same as the arcade, but some of the corny translations are even worse(they can't say twit in this game, but I guess 'Bean head' and 'smelly' are okay.) You're still out to fight a young man who is possessed by the spirit of Amakusa, who is trying to bring a demon into the world. Sadly some of the story sequences(like Amakusa telling you to submit to him) are missing.

Innovation; 9.
For home consoles, this was the first bloody game to be fun. The deaths from the arcade are here, and aren't overdone or completely unrealistic. The boss is playable to make up for the absence of Earthquake(even though I'd rather have Genjuro or somebody, but oh well.) Special moves are mostly original and easy to perform. The pets aren't really my favorite idea but they work well. The referees for some reason or another, maybe to keep you moving, maybe to make the fight unfair, or maybe just for their own amusement throw their usual items into the arena. I don't like this feature, but it's different. Every 2D fighter can be called a Street Fighter clone, but I consider this a Street Fighter killer.

Graphics; 7.
The characters came with all of their great and stylish detail but are missing some of the animations for certain action, but still move well. Why some of the important moves or minor win poses aren't here is beyond me, since they couldn't have taken that much memory. The characters are large all of the time, with the zooming being absent(the Genesis is incapable of this, but it's not really anything that you'll be sore about). Some of this does affect the game play though. The part that suffers the most are the backgrounds. They are lacking in colors and some of the details are removed.

Sound; 8.
A lot of the sound effects in the music are gone, but the music is still mostly the same and actually better than the SNES version(which changed the sounds with weird instruments. The voices are decent, and good when compared to most Genesis games. The slicing sound is still there, and that brings up the score to an 8 instead of a 6 for me.

Controls/Gameplay; 9.
Okay, these vary a little bit. First off, you CAN play the game with a 3-button controller(I had to for a while), and it's not impossible or unfun, but 6-buttons is where it's at! The six button controller lets you perform your hard slashes easier, and some people may consider that too easy, it really makes the game more playable and two player battles can be really fun. Also since Sega's six button was my favorite controller I ever had.... If you decide to use three buttons you will have to learn some weird button combinations in order to get some attacks to work. The only bad side is that since some of the characters have removed animation, their hard slashes change for better and worse. For instance Ukyo's crouching hard slash doesn't arc but is like his sideways medium, so it's harder to hit something but it's faster. The two ninjas have a big advantage here since their hard slash is much faster. And since a full strength(rage bar) hard slash is your best attack, this can make some characters more powerful than they should be.) Dashing is here but you won't get to run from far distances since you can only get so far apart. For those of you who played as Earthquake, you'll have to learn someone else because he's absent....all seven of you. This really doesn't matter to me, even though I did like his stage.

Fun; 10.
This is the best fighter on the Genesis and one of the best you can play in 16 bit fighters. The game can be hard and it's great to play against your friends. Easy to get into, but not easy to master. The AI won't let you be cheap with them for very long, and there are no annoying easy kill combos or fireball battles, nobody really has an actual 'fireball' except the boss. The boss, Amakusa is also playable, but he's really not very fun to play as, at least I don't think. This is a good game for a rainy day and even though you'll probably never play it today, it's worthy of being called the best fighter on Genesis.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/09/03