As a young martial artist I was really into the aspects of the well-known greats, the Bruce Lee’s the Miyamoto Musashi’s and the Gichin Funakoshi’s of legend. So as a gamer I would take to the characters that had in my opinion the coolest looking moves or a likeness to my heroes of martial history. For my birthdays up until I was about 14, the best gift I could receive was a $20 bill and 2 hours to myself at the Malibu grand Prix arcade. It was in this arcade that I honed the invincible fighting skills that I have now – okay of course I jest. Well it was one of these arcade birthdays that I saw the game Samurai Shodown and a disheveled Samurai who seemed an abstract version of Musashi to me. Since the first two tokens to try this beauty, Haohmaru and myself formed a concrete bond.

Samurai Shodown if played now will seem like a simple fighter, along the lines of a Street Fighter 2 or the first Tekken but on the contrary it had an engine unlike anything I had seen at the time. The game seemed to have a hidden system that controlled dizzying, severing torsos and looking pretty. The slowing down of the speed when you kill an opponent critically and the cool win poses and intros set it worlds apart from anything being played at the time and fighting gamers fell in love. Honing a roster of generic representation of real world warriors, Samurai Shodown featured prominent Japanese legends such as the swallow slicing Ukyo, the eye-patched sword master Jubei Yagyu and the mysterious ninja Hattori Hanzo (yes before Kill Bill there was an actual guy kiddies). Outside the shores of Japan you had fighters like Joan of Arc renamed as Charlotte, and a fat American named Earthquake… yes some had no reference at all lol.

When a fighter got good at Samurai Shodown it was like a real Samurai face-off between gamers. My Haohmaru became a bit of a legend on its own having a record of over 100 unmatched victories in my local arcade due to the hidden 3 hit dizzy combo that I had learned from a master. There were Nakoruru masters, Jubei masters and Hanzo masters who would have the grandest of fights and people who lacked the skill that would end up katana fodder for the hardcores. When you talk fighting game history, Samurai Shodown is one of those mainstays that will come up every time and remains one of my favorite fighting games of all time.