But otherwise, the most obvious alterations are with the graphics. Naturally, all of the scaling effects are gone. The Genesis and SNES releases of Samurai Shodown both take many shortcuts and liberties with the source material to make the transition. Most of the home ports were handled by Takara, who often worked with SNK on console conversions. Samurai Shodown was ported to various consoles following its success in the arcades. The only major difference between the Japanese and World versions on the Neo Geo is the missing voiced narration in the intro. But even if you’re unarmed, you can catch your opponent’s sword with your hands and toss them backwards. It’s even possible to destroy a weapon this way. If you manage to completely overpower your foe, they temporarily lose their weapon and need to retrieve it. Occasionally, the combatants end up locking weapons, and only by mashing buttons can you escape.
When the POW hits max, their attacks are more powerful. There aren’t really any super moves in the first Samurai Shodown, Rather, as you take and receive damage, the POW meter at the bottom of the screen fills up, and your character slowly turns bright red.
It also learns your patterns if you take to repeating battle maneuvers, so staying unpredictable is an absolute must. The computer never lets up on you, even on the lower difficulty levels. SNK is pretty much infamous for its difficult CPU opponents and Samurai Shodown is a perfect representation of this. This pacing is really what makes Samurai Shodown unique. You can run by double tapping forward, and leap backward by double tapping back. Kicks can be combined into a single input to make a powerful kick, like the slash attacks, and are often utilized to take an enemy off guard or make an opening in defense. The remaining duos of buttons are used for kicks, weak and strong. If a match is ended with a fierce slash, it may potentially strike an artery, causing a fountain of blood, or cut the opponent right in half, causing them to explode in a mess of bonus coins. Combining the two buttons simultaneously results in a powerful, single strike that deprives the enemy of a rather large amount of their life and cab end the battle rather quickly, just like real life.
Samurai Shodown utilizes a four-button input control scheme – one button is for weak slashes, which are quick but causes minimal damage, and a second for medium slashes, which are more powerful, but somewhat slower. The story revolves around them traveling around the world to stop the demon sorcerer and final boss Amakusa, recently revived by the demon king to shroud the world in darkness. The original Samurai Shodown offers twelve playable characters – Haohmaru, Galford, Hattori Hanzo, Tam Tam, Ukyo, Charlotte, Wan-Fu, Gen-an, Nakoruru, Jubei, and Earthquake.