Sho and Tell

Big news for SNK fans! Terry Bogard makes his debut in Fighting EX Layer tomorrow, and Gematsu has revealed more information about the Samurai Shodown reboot scheduled for release later this year.

Here's what can be gleaned from the article and the accompanying forty-four minute long demo footage. Special thanks to Gematsu editor Sal Romano for the news.

◦ There are sixteen characters planned for the SamSho reboot, with seven available in the demo. These include series regulars Ha-ohmaru, Nakoruru, Jubei, super-sized bandit Earthquake, and of course Galford, who looks like what might happen if someone dropped the books Shogun and Call of the Wild and got the pages mixed together. Three new characters will be included along with the original cast members, and more will eventually be available as downloadable content.
◦ As Galford himself might say, SNK is going back to the basics with this one. Unlike the deeply unfortunate Samurai Shodown Sen, the third dimension is reserved strictly for adding flair to special moves, and there's none of the dross like auto-combos and Mortal Kombat-like fatalities that was added to Samurai Shodown IV. Special moves like projectiles and throws do only minimal damage, putting a strong emphasis on sneaking your blade past your opponent's defenses and into their stomach.

Ha-ohmaru invests his rage gauge in the
"Lightning Blade," and severely injures his
opponent.
(image from CryNGameR)

◦ The trademark rage gauge can either be kept full to increase the potency of your strikes, or sacrificed for either a signature move or a single deadly strike (now called the Lightning Blade), one of the few holdovers from Samurai Shodown IV. Once the gauge is used, it's gone for the rest of the fight, so don't waste it!
◦ I didn't fall in love with the graphics at first... it cribs a lot from Street Fighter IV, with the same splashes of ink and dynamic camera angles. However, others I've talked to made a good point about the (not so) fresh look. If you can't use sumi-e in a game about sword-wielding samurai from Japan's feudal age, where can you use it? Other notable details include the blood that stains each fighter's clothes after a successful hit and, uh, Earthquake's undulating body fat. Jiggle physics don't seem so fun now, do they?

No coins? No straw coffins?! Geez, what a rip-off!
(image from CryNgameR, again)

◦ Incidental fatalities remain, but they're subdued in comparison to later Samurai Shodown games, or even the first one. The two halves of your bisected opponent unceremoniously fall to the ground and fade from sight, which lacks the dramatic impact of a slow-motion shot of the cleaving blow. (I also miss the shower of coins, but I'm funny that way.)
◦ The characters are mostly kept consistent with their original designs, unlike the latest Mortal Kombat games which larded their own fighters with overly busy details, or Street Fighter V, which made unwelcome changes to series staples like Ken. This game is going to be comfort food for fans who haven't had a good Samurai Shodown in over a decade, and SNK has been careful not to upset them.
◦ SNK wants this thing out, like, yesterday. It's planned for the Playstation 4 in June, with other versions trailing behind at the end of the year. BadoorSNK, the proprietor of long-running fighting game web site Madman's Cafe and the person who first announced the news on my Twitter feed, is worried that the game will be rushed to market, like Street Fighter V was when it launched in 2016. However, considering the limited character selection and the lessons learned from Capcom's past mistakes, I'm more optimistic about its future.

I don't have complete confidence in the Samurai Shodown reboot, but what I've seen so far seems miles ahead of Samurai Shodown Sen, Tenkaichi, or anything that wasn't originally released for the Neo-Geo twenty years ago. As a casual but increasingly nostalgic fan of the series, I've got my fingers crossed for this one.