Samurai Shodown has experienced quite the resurgence in recent times, with the release of 2019's Samurai Shodown serving as a soft reboot for the fighting game series. Now, the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection offers a deep look into the unique and influential past of the games. Put together by Digital Eclipse, the same team that mastered the art of re-packaging classic fighting games with the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection is near-perfect in some ways, but may also fall flat when compared to other games of the same ilk.
For the purposes of this review, Game Rant was provided with a Steam copy of the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection for PC. We played with an arcade-style fight stick, running through a chunk of the singleplayer modes and testing out the PvP combat in each of the seven games included.
The way that these seven games have been preserved and re-created is completely unrivaled in gaming, except perhaps by the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection put together by the same team. However, the SamSho NeoGeo Collection goes even further, including new features like video recordings of pro matches in each game with full written breakdowns. The NeoGeo Collection also unearthed the long-lost, almost-mythical Samurai Shodown V Perfect, a final upgrade for Samurai Shodown V whose existence was debated by even the most hardcore fans.
For those unaware of the lengths Digital Eclipse goes to in preserving these games, the accuracy is uncanny. Scan lines can be turned on to replicate the original arcade machine, and even the slowdown caused by characters moving in the background of stages has been brought back so it can be experienced as it actually was on release. There is concept art from each game available through the menus, and full text summaries of each game and its impact at the time.
This all comes together to paint a full picture of the Samurai Shodown series' legacy as a unique and influential fighting game series that never reached the popularity of some of its contemporaries, but nonetheless had a very unique feel and introduced novel concepts to the fighting game space. In terms of preserving a part of gaming history, the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection would already be a masterwork even if it hadn't gone the extra mile to unearth previously unknown secrets and release an entirely new version of one of the games.
For gamers who love delving into the fascinating history of retro titles, and for those who want to understand influential moments in the gradual development of fighting games as a genre, the NeoGeo Collection is completely worth it. From a gameplay perspective, though, the collection cannot hold up in comparison to its closest peer, the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. New features are fantastic and the work put into the preservation is unrivaled, but the number, and frankly the quality of the games, is lower.
It isn't fair to judge games of the past by modern standards, but several games from the Street Fighter Collection hold up remarkably well even in a vacuum where their past influence is ignored. For the SamSho NeoGeo Collection, the games feel their age, and while they have very unique and interesting mechanics, there would be little reason for a player who is not a hardcore fighting game fan or a series loyalist to play them.
Samurai Shodown games emphasize caution, as damage dealt to characters will increase their own strength and special power meter. One mistake can leave an opening for a player on the brink of defeat to punish with a single powerful move and snatch a victory. That can be very fun and engaging, but outside of high-level play it means that many Samurai Shodown moves are overpowered, spammy, and can even feel cheap, especially in older games that don't have the polish of their newer counterparts.
For its commitment to accuracy, success in diving into gaming history and unearthing new stories, and celebration of everything that made classic Samurai Shodown fun and unique, the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection deserves a perfect score. The games themselves, though, may not have much appeal to people who were not already part of the small but devoted fanbase. This contradiction makes the SamSho NeoGeo bundle difficult to score, but it is definitely worth checking out, even if only for the wealth of features and art, the ups and down in the story of the series' creation, and the novelty of giving some quirky classic fighting games a chance to shine.
Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection is available now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Game Rant was provided a PC code for this review.