The Retrospective 07.05.07: SNK Season - Samurai Spirits/Shodown (Part 2 of 4)
Posted by Sean McCabe on 07.05.2007
An RPG based on a fighting game? You don’t say…
I wrote a tribute piece to Chris Benoit last week and I got a few emails of gratitude. To those people who sent them, thank you. But now is the time that we put it behind us and move on. I have a packed column so lets get going.
The Introspective
It put up one hell of a struggle, but finally, Grandia 3 lies broken at my feet. Making it the first RPG I actually successfully completed since Enchanted Arms. It was good, I enjoyed it. Grandia's style of character and telling its story is decidedly old school, balancing out it's extremely creative battle system, but I rather like things that way. That's a trilogy that's definitely worth my attention sometime.
Namco have started spinning their hype machine for the two new Soul Calibur games, and I'm quite happy to pay attention. Whilst I stand quite flabbergasted that Ivy and Taki's breasts seem to have grown even bigger if the screenshots of Soul Calibur IV are anything to go by, nonetheless it's good to see one of the best 3D… perhaps the best… 3D fighting game series still going strong. I couldn't give a crap about VF5 and Tekken 6, (although, just because I don't like those series much, doesn't mean I won't cover them, don't worry) and after DOA3 and DOA4 were both kinda disappointing, I don't think even DOA5 could get me excited, but despite a few issues I had with Soul Calibur 3, I still feel very hyped for SCIV. Well, at least until some details come out on KoF XII anyway, or SNK reveal the existence of a Garou 2 or Last Blade 3… come on SNK, you know we want you to.
Also the Wii gets a pretty bona fide exlusive in Soul Calibur Legends. Now fighting games jumping into other genres rarely goes well (although your going to see an exception in this very column), but for some reason I look very forward to trying this out. Although the storyline will centre around Siegfried, it appears pretty much every character from the original Soul Calibur will likely turn up, and I doubt Namco will leave anyone from the series. Everybody's bound to turn up in at least some capacity. With or without Wii controls, the base concept of this game as well as the options for Co-op action would be enough on their own to capture my interest. Bring it on Namco, and my Cassie better be playable!
Requiem From the Darkness
This week I present to you a series of grizzly tales set in the Edo period of Japan. Based on the novel by Natsuhiko Kyogoku, Requiem From the Darkness is a 13 episode journey with Momosuke, a budding writer who seeks to collect a series of 100 ghost stories to publish as a book. On his travels, he encounters three strange individuals, a tiny exorcist, a hulking bird caller, and a seductive puppeteer. The three travellers appear to punish those that have sinned greatly, and Momosuke… well his path has a tendency to cross theirs more times than is reasonably coincidental. It's a very dark series, there is a little bit of humour scattered here and there, but this isn't exactly a comedy. The art is quite unique, often reminds me of Capcom's Okami twisted into a much darker vision. I'm generally a big fan of horror anime and this is one of the better series in the genre, so if it interests you, check it out.
VG Babe of the Week: Sonia
Sonia is a character from a relatively unknown Neo Geo fighter, Rage of the Dragons. Just goes to show, a game doesn't need to be well known or successful to get in this section of the column.
Developer: SNK
Format: Neo Geo/PSX/Sega Saturn
Release: 1996
Notes: The console ports of this game suffered from slowdown, cut animation and quite horrible loading times, which take away from the quality of the game as it was intended on the Neo Geo hardware.
After the relative disappointment of Samurai Shodown III, SNK once again decided to change things around somewhat. The characters removed from the roster between SSII and SSIII were restored, everybody from SSIII featured, the colour pallet used was brighter an, active dodge was added and ariel blocking was removed. The controls were loosened up and feel a lot more responsive in this game. One of the more interesting additions was a combo initiator. By successfully landing the strike assigned to the C+D buttons pressed together, the player can follow that up with a combination attack.
The game also was the first to introduce the "Hara Kiri" or suicide maneuver. This tactically was a helpful move in the right situations, as the character who performs it will start with a full power gauge in the next round. Finally, the fatality system also saw some expansion, and were made much more violent than previous games, which caused some controversy on it's release, although by this time it wasn't such a hot issue. One other main criticism that can be levelled at the game is that animation and moves were cut from various characters due to memory constraints produced by the much larger roster than previous games.
In Retrospect: This was a return to form for the main Samurai Shodown series, with tight combat and advanced mechanics making it feel a genuine improvement from the third game.
Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits: Bushidou Retsuden
Developer: SNK
Format: Neo Geo CD/PSX/Saturn
Release: 1997
Notes: The first "side" game released in the series, which was not a 2D fighter but rather, an RPG.
The development of the Samurai Showdown RPG had a storied process. It began in 1995, the original idea being the game would feature three chapters based on the first three of the original games. However, due to the game being repeatedly delayed, as well as a plan to only include two out of three chapters in amongst the three different versions necessitating two to be bought in order to experience the full game, SNK dropped development of the third chapter completely and finally released the game in 1997 on the three consoles. The game contained a lot of Kanji and is pretty much unplayable by anyone who cannot read Japanese.
The game plays like a standard turn based RPG and chronicles the journey of the various Samurai Shodown characters. The game allowed the player to select from one from six main characters, and would form a party with various other characters through the game. The battle system was much like Final Fantasy, but with one major difference: Players would input the commands for moves similar to the fighting games. This has been done in a few RPGs since, and differentiated the gameplay immensely. The game mostly played quite well and was enjoyable by most accounts, only brought down by cut down presentation in the PSX and Saturn versions and slow loading times.
Each of the three versions of this game offered quite different content along with the base game. The Neo Geo CD version was the best in terms of graphics and animation, however the PSX version offered a time bar similar to FFVII and had better music than the other two. All three featured separate bonus content.
In Retrospect: A game I would love to play, but well I can't read Japanese. It's fairly uncommon for fighting games to be turned into RPGs, but I think this game suggests it should be done more often… I would love a KoF RPG…
Samurai Spirits/Samurai Shodown 64
Developer:
Format: Hyper Neo Geo 64
Release: 1997
Notes: The first ever 3D Samurai Shodown was also one of the only four games to be released on SNK's flop arcade board.
Almost nobody played this game, much like all of the Hyper Neo Geo 64 arcade games, but there is one very important thing about this game. People will often cite Dead or Alive 2 as the first one on one fighting game to feature fully interactive multi-tiered stages. That is very wrong, as in truth it was the third, fifth if you count the unusual Bushido Blade series. The second was Midway's Mace: The Dark Age released in Arcades and the N64… and this, Samurai Shodown 64, was the first. It featured a mostly new cast of characters, the most memorable of which, Shiki, would develop something of a cult status and feature in numerous SNK games since then, even with the game that saw her debut is mostly forgotten.
I don't know much about the gameplay other than it was apparently very slow, but otherwise relatively good.
In Retrospect: SNK's ability to innovate even in their lesser known games continues to impress. It's almost like every advancement in fighting games made since Streetfighter 2 was released were all innovated by SNK at some point. Can't say much else about this game though, it was hard enough to find info and screenshots on it.
Apologies for no links this week, it's time consuming and I'm running this late already. Anyway, that's all for this week, I intend to go back to The Darkness… well, someone needs to review it around here. Keep things in perspective… even when you have heart-devouring demon heads in your sight.
