The Retrospective 06.22.07 SNK Season: Samurai Spirits/Shodown (Part 1 of 4)
Posted by Sean McCabe on 06.22.2007
Never piss off a Samurai. Or the BBFC.
Well, this is coming at you a day late, and I will be honest why. I forgot to start the column until the day I needed to post it, and I have no excuse other than playing too much Fire Pro, Grandia 3 and God Hand. And God Hand on its Normal difficulty can reduce grown men to either tears or violent rages, which not even the game I'm about to talk about can replicate. However, I think this column will be a good one, so read on.
The Introspective
I got one major thing to talk about, and I'm sure we all know what that is. Manhunt 2 was refused certification by the BBFC thus disqualifying it from distribution in the UK. I read Theo's take on the matter, and I have to disagree with it. The BBFC's statement, made by David Cooke, the Director himself, is as follows,
"Rejecting a work is a very serious action and one which we do not take lightly. Where possible we try to consider cuts or, in the case of games, modifications which remove the material which contravenes the Board's published Guidelines. In the case of Manhunt 2 this has not been possible. Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.
"Although the difference should not be exaggerated the fact of the game's unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying and the sheer lack of alternative pleasures on offer to the gamer, together with the different overall narrative context, contribute towards differentiating this submission from the original Manhunt game. That work was classified ‘18' in 2003, before the BBFC's recent games research had been undertaken, but was already at the very top end of what the Board judged to be acceptable at that category."
"Against this background, the Board's carefully considered view is that to issue a certificate to Manhunt 2, on either platform, would involve a range of unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors, within the terms of the Video Recordings Act, and accordingly that its availability, even if statutorily confined to adults, would be unacceptable to the public."
This statement can be found on the BBFC's site as well as most of the articles that have reported the news. It's important that people read this statement before making any indignant responses because the reason this game has been denied certification is very specific, and it is not due to either the Wii's controls as has been misreported some places, nor anything so simple as the visual strength of the violence within the game. What Rockstar has made in Manhunt 2 is effectively a "murder simulator". The term has been thrown about before by certain people, wrongly about certain games, but according to the BBFC, and they have released a lot of information about the game as they did play through it all and laid bare everything they saw for the public to see, it is impossible to argue the fact, Manhunt 2 simply lacks even the most basic moral dimensions that allowed the first game to be released. It is a game by which there is no reasonable context for the main character commits murder. It is not because you are forced to and need to defend yourself like in the first game, but simply because you are playing a murderous psychopath. And now the game will not even receive a release in America due to receiving an AO rating, and neither Sony nor Nintendo will publish a game with such a rating.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for the game, or for Rockstar or Take Two. The simple fact is to release a game, which is the equivalent of poking a lion very hard, after this lion has already been poked many times already; it is simply their own fault that lion bit them. They could have chosen to give the game a more moralistic context, could have given the player more non-lethal options to progress, or toned down the game's graphic violence. They didn't do any of these things, so as far as I'm concerned, they should have saw this coming, and if this was done in the name of garnering publicity, I think it backfired on them because the game will be banned for sale almost everywhere, and where it is not, it will receive a rating that most retailers will refuse to stock. This game's potential sales numbers has been the thing violently slaughtered ultimately, because no matter the notoriety all this gives the game, such limited availability will ensure it will never sell well, and that's assuming it even gets released at all.
Not that the original deserved to sell well either. It was a piece of shit, with the most broken stealth mechanics I think I've ever seen. There was no reason to believe Manhunt 2 would have played any better, Wii controls or not. This was probably no real loss to gamers.
The Suffering
To continue the dark, disturbed theme of the column so far, I will recommend a game that despite competing with Manhunt for it's extremeness of content, has a far more malleable moral streak to it, and ultimately is an example of a game that is good shock art, with real value in it's narrative and also is pretty solidly enjoyable gameplay wise. I don't think the sequel, Ties that Bind, was as good as the original for a number of reasons, although it was still decent, but I would say The Suffering is a great cult classic and worth of being looked into with anybody for a penchant for horror games.
VG Babe of the Week: Ivy Valentine
Behold, Soul Calibur IV graphics. It's alright to drool, I'm sure many have,
The Breakdown
Alright, I'm going to break format for this one, Traditionally, I name each system for game individually, possibly with individual released dates and statements on what I know about different versions. However, some of these games were released on an incredibly number of formats, no less than twelve for the first game of the series. As such, I will be sticking to the Arcade/Neo Geo hardware releases for games this issue applies to.
Samurai Spirits/Samurai Shodown
Developer: SNK
Format: Neo Geo
Release: 1993
Notes: As I said previously, this game was ported than to no fewer than twelve different systems, each one with differences in quality depending on the system.
Now, SNK had been trying for a while to create a fighter to compete with the quality and success of Streetfighter 2. Their more direct attempts to do this with Garou Densetsu and Ryuko No Ken didn't really succeed. However, by taking a unique route to creating a fighter, from choosing a historical Japanese setting to basing certain characters on people who really existed, using authentic Japanese traditional music and giving each character a weapon, Samurai Spirit's quality and influence should not be underestimated. It was the first games to feature a counter system, which would be mimicked later in too many games to name. Whilst this game was too different from Streetfighter 2 to call this game it's better, this game effectively did for weapons based fighters what Streetfighter 2 did for hand to hand: It was so good it set the bar for everything else that followed. In this game, SNK finally had the massive critical and market success story that they were looking for. The only issue was in oddly enough, the game's graphic content.
The game, whilst not as over the top in blood and guts as its contemporary, Mortal Kombat, was still pretty graphic. There was blood, and fatalities, which saw people being cut apart. SNK edited the game for western release, which drew a number of complaints from fans, and most of the ports were also edited. They would solve this problem later with the Neo Geo home console's region setting, but this problem did blight the release of an otherwise superb game. The game had a pretty sizeable roster for being the first of its series, and most of the characters were well designed and likeable. Hoahmaru and Nakoruru in particular came to symbolise the game much like Ryu and Chun Li did for Streetfighter 2, and Terry and Mai did for Garou Densetsu.
In Retrospect: This game was really incredible for a fighter from 1993. Its graphics were superb, its gameplay was differentiated enough from what else was on the market to make it stand right out, and the presentation was nothing short of top notch stuff. And to think… SNK would better this just a year later.
Shin Samurai Spirits: Haohmaru Jigokuhen/Samurai Shodown II
Developer: SNK
Format: Neo Geo
Release: 1994
Notes: This game in fact did not receive any ports to other systems besides the Neo Geo CD
Although this game did not sell quite as well as the original it was still a major success, and more importantly, it was critically hailed as the best fighter of it's kind. Even today, it is still considered among SNK's greatest ever games and had made more than a few "Greatest Games Ever" lists. SNK rebuilt the game from the ground up, improving everything about this game from the graphics to the actual combat. A Parry system was added, which was a style of offensive block, which would also "borrowed" in many games thereafter. Also introduced is the ability to disarm an opponent by either breaking their guard or hitting them with specific moves. They are then forced to continue the fight unarmed until they can reclaim their weapon lying on the ground.
The roster saw numerous additions and switches, and one of the new characters added was Cham Cham, the younger sister of Tam Tam from the previous game, who I believe was the first catgirl ever included in a fighting game. Well hey, I said it had a historical setting, I never said it was "realistic". The roster is also considered one of the most balanced ever, with there being very little in the way of cheap characters, moves or tactics in this game. It was almost flawless in it's execution.
In Retrospect: An all time classic SNK game and one that everybody should play. Here's to hoping for a virtual console release or a Samurai Shodown collection sometime in the future.
Samurai Spirits: Zankurō Musōken/Samurai Shodown III: Blades of Blood
Developer: SNK
Format: Neo Geo/PSX/Sega Saturn
Release: 1995
Notes: The PSX version was not critically well received due to frame rate issues that plagued it, and the Saturn version wasn't much better.
This game could be described as the first hiccup of the series. It's not terrible, and among it's bright points include a new darker design for most of the characters, some new, memorable additions, a change in the button configuration which the series would retain, and the idea of offering two systems for the player to use, Slash and Burst, which made a character play considerably differently depending on the player's choice. This idea of offering different ways of playing the same character was adopted also as a regular aspect of this series, and also many other games, such as Streetfighter Alpha 3 and Capcom vs SNK. However, in contrast with it's predecessor's, it suffered badly from broken character balancing.
In Retrospect A game that on it's initial release wasn't accepted very well, although time has been kinder to it than it might've been, and frankly, I could still name you a couple of dozen fighters that are still inferior to this game.
