It's EVO season again, with the premiere fighting game tournament allowing for in-house venue participation after being online only during 2020-2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fighting game community has been hyped to see the return of the tournament, with EVO hosting a variety of recent and classic fighting games to play and watch at a competitive level. This year's EVO lineup features a variety of modern hits, including Guilty Gear Strive, Melty Blood: Type Lumina, and Tekken 7 just to name a few. This is also the venue for publishers to announce a variety of new content or DLC, with SNK announcing that Samurai Shodown will be getting an update that contains a heavily requested feature.
Samurai Shodown was originally released in June 2019 for most consoles, with a next-gen and PC release in 2021. The game has received quite a number of updates and had three full seasons of DLC. Last year, Samurai Shodown added Baiken from the Guilty Gear series as its fourth DLC character of its third season, which was both a fitting guest fighter and surprise to fans. At EVO, Samurai Shodown fans were thrilled to hear that the game will be getting rollback netcode.
For the uninitiated, rollback netcode is a feature that most modern fighting games either live or die by for the dedicated competitive player. This code helps handle the stability and improve the online functionality of the game, allowing for less latency and delay. Fan demand for rollback to be implemented in many fighting games is high, where SNK implemented rollback into KOF 15, and now Samurai Shodown is getting it too.
This announcement was made at EVO, with SNK noting that it will be teaming up with Code Mystics to update the game's netcode. This code will be based on the GGPO solution that was previously used for KOF 15. This update is planned to be released in Spring 2023, which is four years after its initial launch. This update will be coming to the PC (both Steam and EGS versions), PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series releases of the game, with the Switch and Stadia being omitted.
This announcement of rollback netcode was widely embraced by the fans and the FGC, who have noted that the previous netcode that had been in place for the initial release was less than satisfactory. Hopefully this implementation will allow for more fans to try out a rather understated fighting game and improve the online experience for those who have been following since launch.
Samurai Shodown is available to play on PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.