Samurai Shodown II

About Samurai Shodown II

Samurai Shodown II (1994) is SNK's Neo Geo weapons fighter, rebuilt from the ground up after the first game's success, with weapon-breaking POW supers, rolls and hops, and an early form of the parry.

Samurai Shodown II in Depth

SNK rebuilt the sequel from scratch, bringing back almost all of the first game's cast, adding new fighters and making the controls more responsive. The POW meter now powers super special moves that do heavy damage and break the opponent's weapon, leaving them to fight unarmed until a replacement is thrown in. Fighters can roll forward and backward, duck high attacks and hop over low strikes. A last-second command lets a player deflect an incoming blow and leave the attacker briefly open, an offensive block later used in Namco's WeaponLord and popularised by Capcom's Street Fighter III. Cameos from other SNK characters, a hidden boss and many Easter eggs reward exploration.

A year after Amakusa's defeat, the vengeful spirit Mizuki Rashojin has possessed a shrine priestess to bring chaos in the name of the dark god Ambrosia. Tam Tam and Amakusa sit out; the new warriors are Haohmaru's merciless rival Genjuro Kibagami, Tam Tam's cat-like sister Cham Cham, the Prussian knight Neinhalt Sieger with his gun-filled gauntlet, the tiny old monk Nicotine Caffeine, the referee Kuroko as a hidden boss using moves from other SNK fighters, and Mizuki herself, the series' first female final boss, aided by the demon dog Maju.

Making Samurai Shodown II

SNK released the game for Neo Geo arcades and home systems in 1994. Game Machine listed it as Japan's most successful table arcade unit in its 1 December 1994 issue, and it was the country's eighth highest-grossing arcade game of 1995. The AES and CD home versions sold 335,505 copies in Japan. For years it reached no other Western platform except the PC; Xbox Live Arcade and Virtual Console versions followed in 2008.

EGM's four reviewers gave the home version 9/10 each and their Game of the Month. GamePro praised "the best graphics ever seen in a hand-drawn animated fighting game" while noting unbalanced combos, and suggested SNK was close to overtaking Capcom as the leading maker of fighting games. Retro Gamer called it "a fantastic two-fingered salute to Capcom", easily the best in the series for sheer fun and accessibility, though lacking the depth of later games.