The end result of this good fortune is the story of one of gaming’s most enigmatic franchises: Samurai Shodown.
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A chance conversation at Tokyo Game Show 2016 put us in touch with Yasushi Adachi, the original series creator, planner, producer and director who guided the franchise up until SNK’s merger with Playmore several years later. With SNK in a bit of a revival at the moment, we went on a quest to track down some of the original Samurai gumi team members and learn more about the origins of the Samurai Shodown series.
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To most Samurai Shodown fans, the only recognizable contributor to the series has been artist Shinkiro, who provided many of SNK’s most memorable illustrations in that era. While teams like Sega AM2 maintained a high profile through the ‘90s, always showcasing their latest games in public demonstrations and regularly appearing in press interviews, the Samurai gumi team toiled away in obscurity. Yet despite being one of SNK’s most-respected properties, little is known about the original Samurai Shodown development team, Samurai gumi. While the series has lost momentum over time, in part due to not keeping up with increasingly advanced hardware, few would dispute it still sits - especially in its first two entries - at the table of hallowed 2D fighters like Street Fighter, The King of Fighters and Guilty Gear.
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A bona fide fighting game legend, the game in its heyday was renowned for intense swordplay and large, beautifully-animated 2D sprites. In 1993, SNK released Samurai Shodown, a pioneering weapons-based 2D fighting game set in 18th-century Japan, featuring iconic characters like Haohmaru the wandering ronin, Galford the ninja from California and Nakoruru the Ainu falconer.