www.Arcade-Renaissance.com

http://game.snkplaymore.co.jp/official/samurai_sen/

Character profiles, stories, and move lists for 2 of the new chars

It feels a bit like the good old days with all this SNK arcade game news around...

Haohmaru and Nakoruru story/profile/move lists up.

Weekly update:

Rimururu and new dude, Kirian (?) story/profile/movelist

I do love the art work for this game, and all past Samsho games. Good to see that while the games may be of dubious quality, at least the fliers and promo materials will look nice.

lech wrote:I do love the art work for this game, and all past Samsho games. Good to see that while the games may be of dubious quality, at least the fliers and promo materials will look nice.

Yeahm I agree. The stuff I'm seeing for Sen is some of the best original artwork from SNK Playmore in a while. Even the promo flyers releases for KOFXII were a bit disappointing compared to Sen's pieces.

Unfortunately, the more I see of the game in action, the more I'm really not getting into it.

The game really does seem to be Samurai Spirits Maximum Impact with more emphasis on side stepping.

RyanDG wrote:

lech wrote:I do love the art work for this game, and all past Samsho games. Good to see that while the games may be of dubious quality, at least the fliers and promo materials will look nice.

Yeahm I agree. The stuff I'm seeing for Sen is some of the best original artwork from SNK Playmore in a while. Even the promo flyers releases for KOFXII were a bit disappointing compared to Sen's pieces.

Unfortunately, the more I see of the game in action, the more I'm really not getting into it.

The game really does seem to be Samurai Spirits Maximum Impact with more emphasis on side stepping.

I've actually become interested in the game more and more since the 2nd loketest reports mentioned that the damage of normal attacks has been increased quite a bit, leading to a very SS1 feel. That's certainly great to hear, since the first impressions were as you've mentioned, "maximum impact." The only things I need now to make this game spectacular are SS3 style music, and of course buckets of blood to be added in.

Speaking of location tests, another one's been set up from Feb 14-19. KOF 98 UM will also be at those same locations, a double loketest. They're sure testing the hell out of these games, I wonder if that's a good thing (honestly interested in player feedback), or a bad thing (no clue about what they're doing). I guess we'll find out from the reports.

(The weekly updates to the official sites were so lame I wasn't going to bother posting them, but I'll mention them here. KOF 98 UM got a Korea Team profile, and a loketest report form that Neo-Geo Sensei guy, and Sen got Genjuro and Galford movelist/profile/story.)

Official release date: 4/17/08

http://game.snkplaymore.co.jp/press_rel ... hp?num=136

LOL @ the fatalities from the GDC trailer. (Why do we get trailers from the Game Developers Conference anyway?)

That said, I'm a little disappointed. These fatalities seem to be continuing the new SS trend started in SSV Special, which I'm not thrilled with. This is not the sort of violence I wanted to see. I was hoping for the comically obscene blood splatter from the previous games (specifically SSIII). It was amusing to see two dudes slash each other up with swords, gush buckets of blood, but still walk away without a scratch. That's where the fun was. And it sort of gets lost by turning SS into Mortal Kombat, where you can slice a guy vertically in half. I don't remember how that system worked in V Special, but I hope this isn't something that can be abused, a la Destroy moves from Guilty Gear. I can tolerate needless things as long as they don't cripple that gameplay.

(BTW, new chars Claude and Angelica were added to the official page today.)

Based on what I was seeing in the trailers, it looks like whatever attack you end up finishing your opponent off with will end up with one of these "fatalities". It doesn't look like they are instant KOs or anything like that - so balancing them doesn't look like it will be an issue. It does look a lot more like Soul Calibur in the US trailer though... Hanzo for example appears to have had his characteristics ripped from Taki. I guess its fitting since they are both ninjas, but still...

RyanDG wrote:... It does look a lot more like Soul Calibur in the US trailer though...

Well that's to be expected, since they're both 3D weapon-based fighting games, the comparisons are inevitable. It just makes SS and SNK look silly to get goaded into trying to be Soul Calubur. Ever since SC came out it has been technically head-and-shoulders above all other fighting games, and SC IV looks too keep it that way. By trying to imitate it, with poor results, SNK is just shooting themselves in the foot. Which brings me back to my point, bring back the comical violence to stand apart, instead of aping someone else's style.

To me, the comparisons go further than simple weapons based 3D combat. The juggles, the side steps, the style... Everything really does look like SNK Playmore is making a second rate Soul Calibur with a lot of blood letting at the end. I do agree that if they went with a more stylistic feel to it (with the comic blood and perhaps more influences from the previous games) I would be more happy with it.

The more I look at it though, the game does seem to have more going for it than Maximum Impact, so that's a positive.

Not sure if this is any big reveal, but Famitsu.com had an article about the game a few weeks ago, where they profiled all the new chars. I don't remember if this dude was mentioned before, but the game has a Native American named Black Hawk in it's roster now.



I think I like this idea more than the huge Viking dude, something about him just doesn't quite vibe with "Samurai Spirits." Native Americans are cool though, and hopefully he'll have all sorts of silly move names to shout like Chief Thunder did in Killer Instinct. PHOENIX!

PS: The official site was updated with Ukyo & Hanzo story/profiles/movelists last week. The also added a screenshot gallery, but it's all built in Flash, and they're all pretty small, nothing to get excited about. (KOF 98UM site got one too, not really worth bothering with updating that thread though.)

Nothing too exciting, just bumping this for completeness sake. Story/profiles/movelists for Wan-Fu and Kyoshiro are up this week, as well as a new batch of screenshots (it's all Flash, so no link for you). Kyoshiro is probably the most visually impressive part of the whole game for me. Kabuki FTW.