Retro Game Review: Samurai Shodown IV
Written by Mits
Most game reviews scope out newly released games, but today I’m taking a look at a blast from the past.
That blast of which I speak is Samurai Shodown (sic) IV: Amakusa’s Revenge, released in 1996 for arcade and Neo Geo.
I have been playing Samurai Shodown games since the early 90’s. I owned the original game for Sega Genesis, but sold it (in retrospect, I wish I had kept it). While browsing Demonoid one day, I came across a torrent for a Windows version of Samurai Shodown 4, and quickly nabbed it. These games had brought me a lot of joy in the past, whether at home on my Sega or at the arcades.
No installation was necessary. I simply extracted the folder from a .rar file and started playing. The game has a simple control set up. The numerical key “1” is the start button, and the movement/attack buttons can be customized. There are four attack buttons: weak, middle, and strong slash, plus a kick.
The first thing that caught my eye about the game was the character selection.
There are 17 characters
to choose from.
Something that has always made me appreciate this series was its inclusion of historical characters. This game features two characters bearing the names of famous Japanese warriors: Hanzo Hattori, leader of the Iga ninja clan in the 16th century, and Jubei Yagyu, one of Japan’s most famous samurai who lived in the 17th century.
Jubei Yagyu (click
on the image and
you will see a gif
that gives a good
example of the fluid
character movement)
Symptoms of Ryu-and-Ken Syndrome are evident, as some characters have similar move sets. I don’t feel this detracts the from the game at all, as these characters often have enough variety in their move sets to keep things interesting. Take for example the two ninjas, Hanzo and Galford: Hanzo’s strong slash has him performing a front flip while slashing, yet Galford’s strong slash is a regular vertical slash. Furthermore, Galford has a dog which he can command to attack, and they both have different fighting stances.
Hanzo and Galford
As if that weren’t enough, each character has two versions: Shura and Rasetsu. The game translates these as “slash” and “bust” respectively, although one could also use “chivalry and treachery.” Neither is particularly accurate, but what it breaks down to is that each character has a good version and an evil version. Likewise, good versions and evil versions have different moves, although from what I can tell, the commands are the same.
Each character has their own storyline, usually involving another character in some way (for instance, Genjuro and Ha-Oh Maru are rival swordsmen). However, they all end up fighting the game’s big bad guy, Shiro Amakusa, a sorcerer of sorts who wields a cursed jewel which increases his power.
Perhaps taking a node from Mortal Kombat, which had been released some years before Samurai Shodown IV, the game has fatalities. Defeated enemies can be cut in half, or made to spew blood very much in the style of Japanese samurai cinema.
Here, we see Genjuro
covered in blood after
defeating Charlotte.
When rounds are won, as with most other games, a phrase denoting victory of some sort appears on the screen. Samurai Shodown IV suffered from a translation error, because when a round is won, the screen reads “VICTOLY!” I couldn’t help but crack up when I saw this for the first time.
Lollin’ at this.
It also appears that the translators spread their creative wings when choosing how to translate phrases of exclamation.
Ukyo meets Shaggy
from Scooby-Doo?
Galford is an interesting anomaly, especially when you consider history. He is a ninja from California, which at the time of the game (1789) was still part of Mexico, yet his dialogs bear the characteristics of a Californian surfer dude.
As for graphics, they rival the Marvel vs. Capcom games for 16-bit greatness. Samurai Shodown IV easily features some of the most impressive cartoon graphics I have ever seen. Character sprites fluidly swing their swords, kick, and jump. Characters’ hair is blown by wind as they move as well. It’s quite impressive.
Unintentional humor
rears its head in this game.
The game’s sound is pretty good as well; in fact, remarkable for the time. Clanking metal denotes blocks and sword clashes, and short clinks are head when characters sheathe swords (such as Ukyo Tachibana, whose sword style is iaijutsu, the art of drawing the sword from the sheath). All of the game’s dialog is in Japanese, but all the text is in English, so you get the general sense of what is going on in each character’s storyline.
If you are interested in this game, it’s a relatively small file (a few hundred megs if I remember correctly) and can be found on Demonoid. I highly recommend it. I don’t get the nostalgic sense of “wow, I’m playing an 11 year old game,” when I play Samurai Shodown IV. Rather, I get the sense of legitimate enjoyment.
Radical, dude. Ceeerazy
waves are gnarly, dig?
Lastly, mad props to vgmuseum.com and klov.com for the screenshots. For some reason, I was unable to make my own while playing the game.
