During the panel for the new Samurai Shodown at PAX East 2019, SNK announced Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection, a compilation of the classic phase of the weapons-based fighting series that marked arcades in the 1990s.
The collection gathers the numbered games of the Neo Geo era: Samurai Shodown (1993), Samurai Shodown II (1994), Samurai Shodown III (1995), Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa’s Revenge (1996), Samurai Shodown V (2003) and Samurai Shodown V Special (2004). Samurai Shodown VI was left out. Development was handled by Digital Eclipse, a studio specialized in preserving and re-releasing classics, and the announced platforms were PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC, with an initial target of fall 2019 in the northern hemisphere.
For fighting game fans, the series has a special place. Samurai Shodown was one of the first games in the genre focused on weapons combat, where a few well-placed hits decide the fight, and it brought the Rage gauge, which fills as the fighter takes damage and opens up new possibilities. It is a different rhythm: patience, reading the opponent and precise punishment matter more than long combos.
What came next
The collection was delayed and only arrived on 11 June 2020, with the Steam version on 18 June that year. The final package brought a bonus nobody expected in 2019: Samurai Shodown V Perfect, a final version of V Special that had never been released to the public. The games got online modes with ranked, casual and challenge-a-friend matches (on the English versions), and the collection included the option to play the Japanese or English versions of the MVS arcade, save functions and a scanline filter.
The Museum mode, which the PAX East announcement promised, arrived with more than 2,000 development documents and images, video interviews with the people who created the series and a player with more than 200 tracks. For anyone who wants to study the genre’s history, it is rare material gathered in one place.
Where to buy
Source: SNK.
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