This Week In Retro: Samurai Shodown (1993) (Patreon)

July 7, 1993: いざ尋常に

by Diamond Feit

The fervor with which audiences pumped money into Street Fighter II cabinets in the early 1990s kicked off a fighting game boom. An incredible number of games would surface in the subsequent years, all vying for attention. Yet the competition was not just between companies but also internally as each company fielded multiple titles in the newly popular genre. Nowhere was this more evident than at SNK, Capcom's neighbor/rival who found great success bringing fighting games to their hybrid arcade/home console platform, the NEO•GEO.

Debuting in 1990, the NEO•GEO initially targeted a wide variety of genres, launching with a shooter, a platformer, a baseball game, and mahjong. Three years later, though, action titles had nabbed the spotlight with burgeoning fighting franchises Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting winning over fans at a rapid pace. Each new one-on-one brawler that appeared on the NEO•GEO had to distinguish itself from its peers, especially since every cartridge-based NEO•GEO cabinet gave players their pick of four to six different games.

In the summer of 1993, SNK would introduce a unique fighting game, both in its premise and mechanics. While it featured very few genuine firsts, its aesthetics and characters would immediately stand out in the crowded marketplace and attract attention all over the world, for Samurai Shodown took the fight from the streets into the history books.

With the unprecedented success of Street Fighter II, most companies rushed to copy its formula as closely as possible, in particular its "world warrior" concept. Not only did an abundance of fighting games include an international blend of combatants and disciplines, but the backgrounds would likewise offer players a miniature travelog of sights and sounds from countries big and small.

Samurai Shodown rejects that notion by setting its action in 1788 during the sakoku period, smack in the middle of an era when Japan closed its borders to all but a few trading partners for over 250 years. Instead of a global showcase, Samurai Shodown puts Japan as a nation and as a culture front and center, serving up an unapologetic celebration of Japan's past even as then-current trends might have frowned on such a display.

Remember, Japan underwent a radical shift in the 80s and early 90s as the country experienced its own unprecedented success; the yen doubled in value and suddenly Japanese people had the means to travel well and spend those yen conspicuously. As ordinary citizens took sightseeing tours with cameras in hand, it cemented the "Asian tourist" stereotype in Western media. However, as Japanese corporations expanded overseas, it fueled a racist backlash which cast Japan as an intruder into fundamentally American ventures.

Driven in part by this anxiety surrounding Japan's accomplishments and in part through my own ignorance, I seldom knew how many of the video games that ruled my childhood came from Japan. Even in the 90s, as voice samples enabled more games to "speak" directly to players, I wrote off any words I couldn't understand to the limitations of the technology. I never thought Ryu or Ken spoke Japanese in Street Fighter II; instead I assumed they were shouting something in anger which got garbled in the recording process.

With Samurai Shodown, SNK presented a Japanese product that could never hide nor even underplay its origins. The Japanese language—both written and spoken—permeates the game in abundance even in localized overseas versions. Nearly the entire cast is Japanese, and several characters are loosely based on actual warriors from the past. To better understand the historical reverence on display here, imagine a United States studio creating an action game featuring Paul Revere and Benedict Arnold.

Even more than the cultural aspects, Samurai Shodown stands apart from other fighting games by arming the entire roster. Most of them carry swords, a few carry different bladed weapons such as spears or knives, and Gen-an Shiranui wields a razor-tipped glove which series creator Yasushi Adachi says came from his fondness for Edward Scissorhands, not horror icon Freddy Krueger.

Regardless of the shape, what matters is that all of these weapons can draw blood, and everyone in Samurai Shodown enters each battle prepared to kill their opponent. For this reason, the specter of death hangs over each battle, raising the stakes above a typical Street Fighter bout. Adachi made this choice to deepen the connection players build with their on-screen counterparts, telling Games Radar "Characters wouldn't be beaten by fists, but would lose their life via blades/weapons, giving more impact and tension to the player's experience."

As a 1993 arcade game, Samurai Shodown did not invent weapons-based fighting or introduce the threat of death; Time Killers featured both of these back in 1992. Yet the fatal level of violence in Samurai Shodown does not feel like a gag or a trite gimmick added for shock value, but rather integral to the act of swinging a sword at another human. The combat reflects this, as a full-strength slash can, under the right circumstances, cut an opponent's remaining health in half. Adachi said management objected to having such high damage from regular attacks, but he told Polygon "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 [management] and kept it in the game."

I didn't know much about Japan or Japanese history in 1993, and what little I knew, I learned from movies or other video games. I had a very specific image of a "samurai" at the time, one that Samurai Shodown defies as none of the characters wear the traditional armor or helmets I associated with that warrior class. Obviously I couldn't understand any of the game's dialogue, but I could tell the people on the screen were talking and not just shouting battle cries. Today I know that the word used to start each round, shōbu, means "match" or "fight," but at the time I thought it sounded like "sorghum."

Even if I had no idea as to the content of Samurai Shodown's unfamiliar writing system or spoken lines, I found all of it absolutely fascinating. It helped that the game proved just as captivating as the cultural trappings, as every attack has the potential to turn the tables. No life lead is safe, forcing players to carefully consider each step, each jab, each leap else it becomes their last.

Samurai Shodown successfully captured the imagination of millions of players, becoming a lucrative franchise for SNK. Many sequels and spinoffs would follow; notably the last NEO•GEO cartridge ever released was Samurai Shodown V Special in 2004. The games have been repackaged and rereleased many times over; the 2020 Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection includes all of the mainline titles plus Samurai Shodown V Perfect, an unreleased revision of the aforementioned final game.

While the series cannot compare to SNK's King of Fighters franchise in overall popularity, Samurai Shodown carved a niche for itself that granted it a measure of notability apart from many of its peers, beginning in 1993 with the very first game. I suspect few fans would call the original Samurai Shodown their favorite—I prefer the second game myself—but given the polish and attention that came with each subsequent iteration, you could argue the first game remains the purest vision of Samurai Shodown ever made. No super moves, no instant kill attacks, no alternate character options. Just two people clashing their blades until one walks away and the other does not.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.