Samurai Shodown Is Next Week’s New ACA Neo Geo Title

Just need my Pokkén DX
Still, I remember burning a ton of time on this game as a kid in the arcades.

..if I had a nickel for every quarter spent on this game in the arcade...

"Who needs Street Fighter?"
Thank you. Exactly that.
I never thought I'd be saying it, but I'd take another SNK fighter over SF2 or it's sequels any day at this point. Capcom needs to just kick the last few holes in the hull of their sinking ghost ship and sell the goods to Nintendo already.

I've bought KoF98 and Garou so far.I'd never played either of them before. They're both brilliant but Garou is definitely my favourite. Man what a game that is. Can't believe I only just played it for the first time 3 days ago. Last Blade 2 is another apparently brilliant fighter I've never played.Hopefully they'll bring that to Switch too.

I had Shodown 2 on Wii and loved it. I considered buying 4 last week but I think I'll wait for 2 instead. I never played it as much as I would have liked to back then and since my love for fighters is back big time I'm looking forward to giving it another go.

To be honest, these first outings are some of the weakest of these storied franchises. Switch already has Samurai Shodown IV, one of the strongest of the franchise, so its hard to get excited about the original. Other then being of historical note. I'd much rather see stuff like Samurai Shodown V Special get the focus.

@NImH The company is not what it used to be. That's for sure. I haven't thrown in the towel on them yet. RE7 was good. A remake of RE2 is on the way. Marvel vs capcom infinite is looking decent. It's not all "doom and gloom" with crapcom.

I don't like fighting games most of the time, but I love this series.
I think it's just the weapons

omg enough fightings games ...

@peeks Just ignore them. More the merrier I reckon Now we need more shmups and I'll be in heaven

@NImH an Arcade ROM of SFII would be greatly appreciated and beats any SNK fighter any day of the week. SFII - perfect learning curve coupled with iconic fighters and balanced/nuanced gameplay.

Classic, now just bring II over and I'll be good.

Instant buy for me. I played Samurai Shodown (Mega Drive) as a kid and while I couldn't get back into it with Anthology for Wii because I didn't have anyone to play with at the time, I got back with Samurai Shodown IV on Switch. Since it's summer I'm with my family and I can play multiplayer games everyday. Mostly looking forwards to playing as Genan since he's not in SSIV.

Welp with this and Street fighter I can pretty much go into hibernation for a few weeks...waits on pins and needles for her HRAP.

Who needs Nintendo? We have Neo Geo!

People seem to rate II then I over IV.

If this came out after II I'd probably pass, but I'm so tempted to get it.

@NEStalgia Yay! Another one!

Samurai Showdown 2 is my favorite. Haven't bought any Neo Geo games yet, but that will likely be my first.

I got to ask. Is it Shodown or Showdown?

@Zeargo It's Samurai Spirits in Japan and Samurai Shodown in the West. And when you win a fight victoly is yours!

How about a bit of variety Hamster baseball stars 2 , street hoop, windjammers, super sidekicks 3 and most of all neo drift out . As much as I love SNK fighters I don't wanna buy all of them. I do love these ACA conversions they look great on the Switch screen , just need a few different genres

This one is rather special. Since most arcades only had one "Street Fighter II" cabinet over here, long lines were the norm and I simply didn't have the time to wait it out, finding refuge on empy SNK cabinets instead. And one day I discovered "Samurai Shodown" and I have become a fan of the series ever since. Happy to see Hamster bringing this one to the Switch.

If you haven't already, this is mandatory read.

@Jim_Purcell I agree with you that KoF '94 and especially the first Fatal Fury are very weak compared to their sequels. The first Samurai Shodown however is absolutely fantastic.

All Samurai Shodown games are fantastic, apart from V which was the weakest (graphically, somehow) Probably because it was developed by a different company. I have all 6 main games on the Samurai Shodown Anthology for Wii.
I have never played Samurai Shodown V Special, though. It's probably better than V. That's the one I wait for.

The Wii Virtual Console has the Neo Geo versions of Samurai Shodown 1, 2, 3, 4.

But I dearly miss my lost old Super Game Boy Samurai Shodown. That one was my first Samurai Shodown game, and it was my favourite handheld fighter back in the day. Street Fighter II was weak on the Game Boy, as were all the Mortal Kombat's except 2. Killer Instinct was good. Battle Arena Toshinden was also great, and I almost picked up World Heroes 2 Jet, which was supposedly one of the best Game Boy fighters as well.

Samsho II can't be too far away then, hopefully.

@Pazuzu666
Yeah I'd love to have the arcade version of Street Fighter II. I remember when it first came out in the arcades. You could hear the elephants from Dhalsim's stage long before you saw the machine.

@rdrunner1178 we same.

@Shiryu Thanks for that link, it was an interesting read. And I just loved this bit:
"SNK management said this design had to be changed, but I thought it was very interesting to have players fight under the risk and fear of fighting with weapons and feel the destructive force of the sword, so I ignored them and kept it in the game. "

That won't fly with big publishers anymore nowadays, and he also said as much later on in that part of the interview, which is a shame, really, because it stifles creativity and innovation.

"Who needs Street Fighter?" Well, I do, but that being said, I do also need SamSho II...SamSho, well, not so much.

@ThanosReXXX we are living in very silly times...

Hey Nintendo! You're boring me with the Switch already.

This is a good release. First two episodes were the best in the serie. Second was better though.

@Shiryu Great read. Thanks for sharing.

So it sounds like there's not really a consensus on which Showown is the best. Any recommendations, if I want to get only one of them?

@crackafreeze My pleasure, learned a lot from it when it was first published.

@Superryanworld two words: Mega Man
It's plain unforgivable at this point.
And even the newer RE titles (excepting Revelations, which I thoroughly enjoyed) are aimless. They've lost that RE spirit. As for Marvel vs Capcom, it's also gone the way of canned pop music. Almost all frills and T&A, but none of that tight, classic, kickass fighting. It feels like the train has been coasting on the steam of Super Street Fighter 2 for longer than some gamers have been alive.

@Jim_Purcell
Samurai showdown V special just got announced by SNK today for ps4 and vita with online play and all the gore intact, it's a complete port of the arcade game that's been ported by SNK themselves, no switch version but that could change maybe

@EDF Well that's pretty cool at least.

@Zeargo It's Shodown, just like how Mortal Kombat is "kombat" and not combat. Misspelling in the title is the game's trademark so you had to spell it like that when searching the game. Correcting the title means you got the wrong game. I remember a certain someone who sell a SNES cartridge on ebay once and it's called Samurai Showdown with a "w" in between. Got the game, play it and it was actually a bootleg with atrocious sounds, moves that never works, and had like over 30 characters which are basically repeats of the same characters all which plays similarly a like and broken. Don't make the same mistake, search for Samurai Shodown, not Samurai Showdown.

The original Samurai Shodown is still my all time favorite to this day (right behind SamSho II), got that game on SNES, Game Boy, and Genesis. Also still got the arcade perfect port for the 3DO somewhere in my basement but my 3DO is busted and doesn't work anymore. Then I got it again on the Samurai Shodown Anthology for Wii and PSP as well as on Wii's VC. Now I'm ready to play this again for Switch as well.

I kinda had my fill with SamSho 1 when I owned the NEOGEO cart. I did love some of the backgrounds, endings, and the presentation of the stage intros. But alas, after playing 2, there are just so many controls and evasive options, I can't go back.

@Jim_Purcell @EDF SNK put V Special on the Humble Store for a little over a year and a half ago. If you don't mind the bare bones presentation, with no bells and whistles like the ACA series, then it can be had for $5.99.

@masterLEON It's not about buying and owning, or even playing the game. It's about buying, owning, and playing it... on Switch. That pick-up game portability can not be understated.

@Jim_Purcell That will likely happen, it's just a matter of time.

@Shiryu thanks for posting that, great stuff!

@admwllms My pleasure.

I still need to get the 4th game, and Garou, which seems awesome. Other than that, i'd love to see Last Blade 2. Hopefully it's on the list. Online play for these would make these insta buy for me anyway, but with just a straight up port, it's still a bitter decision for even 7 bucks.

@Ryu_Niiyama @ThanosReXXX You guys are the resident neo geo fighter experts.... between samurai 1, 4 kof98, 99, fury, fury special, and the others, which 1 or 2 do you recommend most? Since my internet seems to suddenly be double natted a of yesterday, online gaming is now dead until that's resolved, assuming it is, and splatoon is now a non - release to me. Might as well learn a new fighter or two against the ai for giggles!

@NEStalgia Well, Samurai Shodown 1 is a good game, and iconic for several reasons, read the excellent article that @Shiryu linked to in comment #22 for more info on that, but it is not the best game in the series. That would be part 2.

From the other games you mentioned, both the first and second parts are good, so you can hardly go wrong with any of them. In some cases, later games were improved, gameplay-wise as well as graphics-wise, but sometimes, newer games also had additions or changes that weren't better. One game that definitely has the better sequel as far as I am concerned, is The Last Blade, so if that series is on the Switch, choose the second game, not the first.

Here's a couple of good lists to give you some idea of where games are in the ranking and why:

http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/09/the-25-best-snk-fighting-games-ever-made/real-bout-fatal-fury

http://www.ranker.com/list/best-neo-geo-fighting-games/reference

Not all titles in the first link are on the Neo Geo, but that's mentioned in the descriptions, so you should have no problem finding the "real" Neo Geo games.

And here's a top 5 video, to show some gameplay:

@NEStalgia Hey sorry, been swamped with work/studying so I haven't been online much. Hmm I'm trying not to let nostalgia and bias creep in so if some of the other NEO Geo heads Like Tatsuki want to chime in go ahead.

Samurai Shodown I (While the first entry it is very iconic and imo better than IV but not better than II or VSpecial...the entire series on Neo Geo is still good though.)

Garou Mark of the wolves (just buy it, seriously)

Out of the KoF games 98 was my favorite but I also fell off with KoF and just played Garou (KoF XIV is sorta my return and I only bought it because of my FG obsession and Nakoruru from Samsho is in it...)

The others like Fatal Fury or Waku Waku 7 won't really do much for you unless you really like FG.

Waiting patiently for my HRAP. Hoping we get Last Blade 1 and 2.

@Ryu_Niiyama Thanks! I'd tried out Fatal Fury Special before you replied on someone else's recommendation....my only takeaway was that it was pretty much Street Fighter II but with a 2.5D element and I couldn't beat ANYONE. I bought Garou based on your reply here....it's actually really good. I have NO idea what I'm doing...the Neo Geo manual doesn't map well to my head so reading the manual isn't as helpful as the USFII mappings screen. But it's easy enough at first that I can beat a few fighters (I'm getting trashed in the later ones though.) and I can't figure out how to do more than basic punch/kick/block/etc. Looks like a fun one overall though. Samurai Shodown I'll just wait for the second one which is, I'm sure, inevitable.

Heck, the Namco bundle alone might make the HRAP pay for itself