Samurai Shodown

"Arcade sword slashing in the palm of your hands"

Samurai Shodown, one of SNK's greatest 2D weapon-based fighting game ever made had spans multiple console release from arcade to Neo Geo to Super NES and Sega Genesis and many countless collections yet to come and it looks like it won't show any sign of stopping. Instead of drooling what's yet to come, I'm going back in time to check on an original port of this one time classic known as Samurai Shodown, the original Game Boy port of the arcade game. So taking a look back how does it stack up today, very good indeed and you'll find out why.

Graphics:

What's supposed to look like an original black and white childish handheld fighting game seem to become a portable arcade machine of its own. This graphics here closely resemble those found in the arcade from the opening clips to the title screen, heck even the gameplay had that little arcade touch to it. From the lush backgrounds to the super deformed character sprites, everything look just so cute and polish that the game felt more recognizable than those found in the console ports. Though you won't find any sparkles or blood in the game you will find a ton of unique animations from the fighters from Haohmaru's sword tossing victory to Jubei's thousand sword strikes and Hanzo's mirror mirage technique all had made some faithful transition to the portable edition. If cute cutscenes are your cup of teas then you'll be right at home here with each characters having superb win clips and cutscenes throughout the game and it'll only be greater once you see there endings which are worth seeing.

Sound/Music:

At first before playing this game, I always thought the Game Boy had one of the weakest sound system of any portable, heck I could go as far as saying that the Game Gear handheld had a much better sound system than this but this game had proved me wrong. The music in this game are outstanding, most of them are even exclusive soundtrack made just for this game, those includes themes for Haohmaru, Nakoruru, Gen-An, and one of my favorite tune of all, the Kuroko & Hikyaku bonus theme. Even some of the characters theme which doesn't had any musical tunes like Jubei, Hanzo, etc. now had a bit of bells and whistles to them which is a good thing. Besides from the music, the sound is kind of lacking since there really is two to three sound effects such as the cling of a sword, the agony on an attack and the sound of a kick but does the game really felt broken because of those, this game is a Game Boy title after all and because it got the great music, who really care if the sound isn't as perfect as the arcade one since an arcade machine and a Game Boy are not on the same level as each other in hardware spec anyways. Of course, the Game Boy version of SS won in the musical side of things, something the arcade version didn't had.

Gameplay:

In this game, you had a massive choice of twelve samurais for your choosing each wielding a unique weapon. The gameplay is simple, you fight one-on-one, slashing and kicking your way to victory, each of the twelve characters also comes pack with more than enough specials to keep you train. One great feature to this game like all other SS ports before it, the POW meter at the bottom of the screen will slowly build up as you get attack or hold your guard, once the POW meter is full, your character will be able to launch a heavy strong attack that will slice up nearly 60% of your opponent's health off. So if you ever felt like you are in a disadvantages, you'll need that extra boost of strength from the POW. Of course, getting the POW meter to the max isn't easy but getting it and not using it will cause you great regrets when you lose a bout. One minor downside to the gameplay is the loading and speed of the game, for being on a cartridge the game plays quite slow, not too slow like Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the Super NES or Samurai Shodown III on the PlayStation but a little slow. This doesn't hamper the gameplay at all but does makes the game feel a bit long for having slow loading after each match but since it's portable and was an early game at the time, this kind of loading is acceptable just as long as the gameplay is solid. Like all other early 90s portable 2D fighting games of that era, combos were non-existence so don't expect anything from chaining attacks to linking two-in-one combos cause it won't happen in this game. Also another feature gone from the arcade game for this edition is the zooming and scaling, which is a unique feature for this in the arcade but here in portable fashion, it's an exception since the Game Boy isn't powerful enough to handle zooming and scaling.

Control:

There really isn't any problem with the control in this game. The game only requires you the use of two buttons and there are really three attacks using those two. In the arcade game, there are six different strength of attack, three for slash and three for kicks. SNK and Takara are smart enough to limit the attack to the most important ones with A being use for kick, B use for slash and both use for hard slash. To me, kick isn't really a problem since I rarely use it in this game anyways and medium attacks are just so unhelpful but the rest of the other two are very helpful and simple to use. The only thing that kind of bother is sometime some specials require a slight delay to make them work but really once you got the hang of it they'll be as simple to execute as throwing a hadoken.

Replayability:

Like the home ports of every SS game, this portable SS also got tons of exclusives features which gave it tons of replayabilities such as three fully unlockable characters for play, a two-players vs. link mode and Super Game Boy support for fun multiplay on the big screen. With all the fun stuff you could do in this game whether if mastering all the fifteen playable characters in this game or just trying to get all the endings or playing against a friend or rival, the fun of this game will last for a long time.

Worth buying or not?

So in conclusion, this game is great in almost every way, perhaps if the speed is fast enough, the game will be even better but since old technology is still improving back then I won't drop points because of that so as long as the control are solid, the gameplay is fun and the game is enjoyable whether if it's in black and white or not. This game is definitely a must-buy and a worthwhile addition to your portable fighting craze.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/13/08

Game Release: Samurai Shodown (US, November 1994)