| Developer(s) SNK
Publisher(s) SNK
Designer(s) Galapagos Team
Release date(s) August 11, 1993
Genre(s) 2D Weapon Based Versus fighting
Mode(s) Up to 2 players simultaneously
Platform(s) Arcade, 3DO, Game Gear, Game Boy, Master System, Sega Mega Drive, Game Gear, Neo Geo, Neo Geo CD, Sega Mega-CD, Super Nintendo
Media (118 Mbit cartridge)
Input 8-way Joystick, 4 Buttons
Arcade cabinet Upright
Arcade system(s) Neo Geo
Arcade display Raster, 304 x 224 pixels (Horizontal), 4096 colors
Samurai Shodown, known as Samurai Spirits (?????????, Samurai Supirittsu?) in Japan, is the first game in SNK's popular series of fighting games. It was set in the late 18th century and all of its characters wielded weapons. It also bore comparatively authentic music from the time period, rife with sounds of traditional Japanese instruments, such as the shakuhachi and shamisen, and a refined version of the camera zoom first found in Art of Fighting.
True to its use of bladed weapons, the game also included copious amounts of blood. Its overall aesthetic drew in the curious, and made SNK many fans.
The game quickly became renowned for its fast pace, focused more on quick, powerful strikes than the combos.
Story
The official story, as given by SNK, is as follows:
"Plagues of unknown origin, strange phenomena, repeated outbreaks of war: these were enough to cause panic and plunge people into despair.
But one smiled as he surveyed the unfolding chaos rending the world asunder.
For this 'man,' once slain by the forces of the Tokugawa Shogunate, hate for the Shogunate is all he possesses along with newly acquired dark powers to bring it down.
This 'man,' Shiro Tokisada Amakusa, unleashes his unworldly forces and spreads his false creed in an attempt to lead the world to ruin.
But in the midst of such calamities, there were still warriors who put their beliefs to the test. These warriors spurred by different motives and beliefs converge as if drawn together, battle, and make their way to the source of the chaos."
Home version and ports
When SNK released the game for the home console version of the Neo Geo system, the AES, the fans bought it up in droves, and it still stands as the most successful run of home Neo cartridges ever produced.
The game was ported to multiple other platforms, including the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Mega Drive, Sega Game Gear, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, 3DO, FM Towns, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. All of the cartridge versions were handled by Takara, while Crystal Dynamics ported the 3DO version, and JVC handled the Sega CD port. All the ports vary in quality, given the individual capabilities of the systems it appeared on.
All the 16-bit Sega versions of the game (including the Sega CD version) omitted Earthquake. Both versions lack the camera zoom, and as a result the camera is zoomed-in, which gives better detail to the characters, but the fighting area is smaller. Of note is the Sega CD version, which contained a bug which caused the game to crash when the final boss was reached. Publisher JVC offered to replace glitched discs with copies of Fatal Fury Special (which they also published for the system). No "fixed" version was released.
The Super NES version, by contrast, has the character line-up intact, but has the game zoomed-out, which makes the characters look tiny and harder to time attacks. The stages, on the other hand, are less restricted. This version also supports Dolby Surround.
Censorship
When Samurai Shodown was first released for the AES, this release incited controversy in the United States, due to its featuring of blood and graphic fatal attacks that kills opponents by slicing them in half or making them spray blood. It was decided to censor the game for most platforms, by changing the blood from red to white and disabling all of the fatal attack animations. There was no code to re-enable it, and many US fans who bought the game were angry that the game they had paid for was not 100% true to the arcade experience, a notion which ran contrary to the professed point of the AES in the first place. The 3DO version, however, was ported almost a year later, and managed to reach the console with all blood and fatality graphics intact. As a result, some retailers didn't even carry this edition of the game.
Samurai Shodown is justifiably considered the starting point for the wave of Neo Geo console modifications, which would enable users to set the system's region to Japan, or play in arcade mode, which would in turn allow the game to be played with all of the blood and death animations intact, even on a U.S. console. It also marked the beginning of SNK's nebulous and much-discussed policy of censoring their games for release in the United States, which still persists (albeit sporadically) to this day.
As a result of the controversy over Mortal Kombat, the Sega 16-bit ports frequently had the violence toned down. While the blood is featured, it is used sparsely and one of the fatalities is cut for each version.
The Super NES version is censored, in this case because of Nintendo of America's censorship rules at the time. The blood was recolored orange and the half slicing is removed.
These censorship issues are carried over to the win quotes, and references to death or blood were altered. For example, one of Tam Tam's quotes from the Super NES version was changed from "My blood boils for battle" to "My sweat bubbles for battle."
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