And aside from owning a Neo Geo AES, an arcade cabinet machine or a “supergun” (An arcade motherboard adapted to work on a stock TV.), playing many of these games in any way close to their intended form was – and arguably still is – prohibitively expensive. Also complicating the situation is the video game industry’s hesitance to embrace anything that resembles a back catalog. Then Samurai Shodown 3 only made it to the US as a launch Playstation title. Earthquake was only to be found in the 3DO version, there were missing voice samples on many ports, etc. Sure, you could find the first Samurai Shodown on almost every console available in the early 1990s (the Genesis, Super Nintendo, Game Boy*, Game Gear, Sega CD and 3DO, for those with pedantic tendencies) but there was a unique drawback to whatever version you chose i.e. After all, this is the first time a US audience has ever had the chance to play Samurai Shodown 2 on ANY console via a physical medium, as well as Samurai Shodown 4 for the same reason. “ SSA could very well amount to the best collection of games ever compiled on a single disc,” I thought, possibly surpassing the nigh immaculate Mega Man Collection. Now that I finally have this disc – this deceptively exciting review build – taunting me as I dare to press the start button, I found myself in a rather peculiar position from which I write this review.Īs I sat there, navigating the flashy, space-aged honeycombed menu system that SNK Playmore has made to greet players, I realized that the nostalgia I have for this franchise might seem insurmountable. Fifteen years is also a very, very long time to allow nostalgia to accumulate. Over a period of time this long, many things have come and gone: going through high school, college, a few jobs and an MA program, two pairs of Clinton and Bush presidencies, the birth and neglect of the Oslo Accords, the Geo/Chevy Prism and Crystal Pepsi. “Has it really been 15 years since the first Shodown title was released?” Indeed it has. When I first turned on Samurai Shodown Anthology (henceforth abbreviated as SSA) – something I’ve been enthusiastically waiting to do since it was announced – I noticed a rather delightful caricature of Haomaru that read, “Samurai Shodown: 15th Anniversary.” After a gut reaction of,”Aww, that’s synthetically sentimental.” I then sat there, jaw half agape, reflecting on what I had just seen. Opening sequence and navigation shell by SNK Playmore. Developer: SNK (Parts 1 through 4), Yuki Enterprise (5) and SNK Playmore (6).
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