Samurai Shodown

Wan-Fu sounds like a total doofus compared to his voice in the first Sam Sho...

New record... I got I think 6 or 7 opponents in on the first Sam Sho, playing as Haohmaru, on the MVS difficulty setting.

First up was Gen-An. The guy reminds me of Choi Bounge, which means DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE!

After that was Kyoshiro. He wasn't as easy this time but was still possibly the easiest opponent.

Next up was Tam-Tam. I remembered this guy being easier on previous playthrus, but since I was on MVS mode for god-knows-what reason, he was more troublesome.

After that was Wan-Fu. In comparison to previous attempts, this time he was easy (and yes, I was using the tactics ya'll suggested—thanks a lot for that).

Then there was Charlotte. This is the first time I've ever beaten her, and it wasn't easy. Charlotte is in general a pain in the ass because it seems like all her moves have priority. I had to take advantage of her wind-ups and wind-downs, and basically jump behind and slash her any time she did that forward-thrust-hundred-stabs move.

Galford was next. He was easier than Charlotte but still no pushover, and I often had to just wait until he sent Poppy after me and then jump over the dog and slice him. I also learned the hard way that its often better to avoid attacks than block them, especially when the timer is low and you're trying to win simply by having more health.

Then I had to face a doppelganger. I believe I won this one without using a quarter, although it was looking on the ropes there for a minute (partly due to real-life kitty interference). It also seemed like there was some glitches in his pre-battle text.

Next up was Jubei Yagyu, who I was about to declare the "please just kill me" guy. He seemed impossibly fast, and like Charlotte it seemed like all his attacks had priority. Around this time Battle Fatique was setting in (basically meaning I had been playing the game longer than I was used to and I was starting to find it harder to focus, a fault that comes from a lack of training), but I managed to conquer after about four quarters were spent.

The enemy that finally got me? Little Nakoruru. I thought I was seeing weaknesses in her attacks, but by this time battle fatique had fully set in and it was hard for me to be as quick and responsive as I needed to be to come up victorious. I tried to defeat her about six times, and then I gave up. Oh well, there are worse people I could've lost to.

Lessons learned from this session:

• 1. Learn when its better to block and when its better to dodge (Poppy charging or Jubei shoulder-ramming should be dodged)
• 2. If you manage to disarm an opponent, by god make sure they never get their weapon back. Especially if its Charlotte. She's piss-easy once disarmed.
• 3. Never let anyone corner you if you can help it.
• 4. Low attacks. Some of the opponents seem to have huge blind spots around their legs, or have lots of attacks that leave them open.
• 5. If an opponent is dashing at you, with the right timing you can catch them and turn it into a throw. I must practice this.
• 6. If a tactic is working, keep using it. I read somewhere that the CPU will adapt to recurring attack patterns but I haven't yet seen this to be true.
• 7. Jubei is not related to that guy from Fatal Fury 2.

And I might need to tune up my arcade stick as well... it seems like some moves aren't coming out as easily as they used to. Or that could be my battle fatique and the fact that I had a cat biting my knee through most of the game.

Now, anyone have any other tips—_*Moe plops over from exhaustion*_

You forgot to add this:

8. Gen-An is not related to Mai Shiranui, despite having the same surname.

I thought it was stated he was her distant ancestor? You know for irony?

There was also fanwank that Genjuro is an ancestor of Iori but that seems pretty false.

SNK tends to go back and forth on whether the Shiranuis are related or not.

I think Word of God has always been that Genan and Mai aren't related, but with all of the connections between SNK's series, I don't think the idea is impossible (if not more than a smidge unlikely). After all, Genan has Azami for a wife; maybe over the ages, all of that demon blood would be heavily diluted and his descendants would be 99.9% human and thus normal-looking.

Is Gen-an really a demon? I thought he was just foul?

I'm almost 100% certain Genan is a demon. At the very least, he's not human.

I'd like to pose this one question: Will this series benefit from a Continuity Reboot?

Maybe, and only in the sense of a reboot in that it'd take less games for a conflated retelling of the originals. Most of the games are crammed within a period of 5 or so years (with some anachronisms here and there), if I'm not mistaken, VI is a Dream Match Game, and the one time the series broken away from that time period (Warriors Rage, which jumped ahead 20 years; not to be confused with 64: Warriors Rage/64 II for the Hyper Neo Geo 64), it was basically the Soulcalibur V of the series.

edited 12th Sep '13 7:51:26 AM by X2X

So, is it likely that we'll finally meet Samsho's Big Bad, Ambrosia? And no, I don't mean Yuuga.

Last I remembered, Ambrosia's a chick. You can sorta see her in Samsho 2's final stage. Which is very creepy— even to this day.

Do you suppose if there's a reboot, they should try to improve the failed engine at SEN and make it reliable...

Or go back to the style in 1 or 2 (highest points of the game) and improve upon it...

And do we need a more casual combos a la in KOF or even GG/BB?

All I can see in Mizuki's stage is a child◊ (of indeterminate gender), not unlike the Fetus of God stage from Darkstalkers 3.

At any rate, Yuga has been suggested to have some relationship to Ambrosia (its avatar, perchance?, so I think that, with all the build-up and Ambrosia's connection to main villains like Amakusa and Mizuki, it'd make sense to eventually get to that point.

Returning to their roots while making the gameplay more accessible like more recent KOF games (starting with XI) sounds good, though I have to wonder how smoothly that'd work; the first few games felt somewhat like the 2D predecessor of Bushido Blade.

One question, why did they change the name from Samurai Spirits to Samurai Shodown for the US version?

Dunno. Maybe SNK felt it sounded better to a foreign market, which might have not been as privy to Japanese history and mythology.

I see, thanks

Apologize for double-posting and resurrecting this thread, but I found this, though I might be late to the party.

Hopefully it'll do good and SNK would have learned that they shouldn't use a Soul Calibur-lite engine.

Or to pawn it off to a separate development team for that matter, which is how they wound up with a Soul Calibur-lite system in the first place.

edited 27th Mar '16 8:17:46 PM by kkhohoho

.... I suppose it is too early to celebrate. Remember the date we're approaching, pal.

edited 27th Mar '16 8:19:45 PM by ChrisX

Except the post that Hallow Hawk linked to was dated February 10th. A bit too early for April Fools, isn't it?

Well, I had my experience from Smite dataminer team that they made datamined/leaks that there will be a new Pantheon incoming (Celtic), far before April 1st, and then at the date, announce that it's all hoax.

So after that I am extra aware.

Oh. 0_0

You know what? They should release SS VI on Steam. Because I don't care what anyone else says; SSVI is one of the most fun and comprehensive SS games I've ever played, and if SNK really is making another SS game, the least they could do is help promote it by letting prospective new players get a decent feel for what the series is like, and what better way to do that than with a game that has all of the previous characters and several different gameplay systems? or better yet, get SS Anthology on there. That would be awesome.

edited 27th Mar '16 8:51:19 PM by kkhohoho

Actually that makes sense as long as the online play is good. (*cough* KOF 13 *cough*)

I'd take any excuse to play as Cham Cham again outside of an emulator.

I'd prefer SSVI over Anthology, of course.

edited 27th Mar '16 8:40:49 PM by Malco

Even when Anthology still has SSVI on it, with all characters unlocked from the start to boot?