|
 Polygon
put together a "Making of Samurai Shodown" article that every
SNK fan will want to read. The article features interviews with 3 original
SNK developers: Yasushi Adachi, Tomoki Fukui, and Norio Tate. The interview
cuts through a wide variety of topics, including early design
inspirations, artwork, sound design, console releases, and SNK as a
company. Here are just a few excerpts from the interview, below:
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Polygon:
OK so Fatal
Fury was the Street
Fighter equivalent at SNK, and Fatal
Fury was hand-to-hand combat, but Samurai
Shodown was weapons-based. [Why did you
choose that approach?]
Yasushi
Adachi: We
wanted to illustrate the terror of fighting weapon-to-weapon, the
impact of fighting with a sword in the game. That's why the damage
of being cut by Haohmaru's sword is significant in the game. The
player loses over half of their life gauge when successfully cut
by a sword. There was a lot of internal criticism about deducting
so much life gauge with one attack. SNK management said this
design had to be changed, but I thought it was very interesting to
have players fight under the risk and fear of fighting with
weapons and feel the destructive force of the sword, so I ignored
them and kept it in the game.
Polygon:
It actually makes
sense to lose that much life. If someone hits me tomorrow with the
business end of a samurai sword, I can tell you with confidence
that my personal lifebar is going to go down by at least half.
Yasushi
Adaci: Right,
but it probably wouldn't pass in today's industry. As you know,
today's game developers create the game, but then there's a QA
division that tweaks that game based on market research and focus
groups. The dev teams today have to take the market research into
consideration when finalizing the game. We can't make a game today
that is so inconsistent and unbalanced in the distribution of
damage. Basically, it was a controversial design decision that
probably wouldn't happen today. |
At the end of the article, Adachi also states that he would like to "reunite
the original Samurai Shodown dev-team and make a new game". 
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Polygon:
There are rumors that
a new Samurai
Shodown is in the works. Is your company
Engines involved?
YA:
No, we're not involved. However, one reason why we decided to do
this interview is that the original Samurai Shodown team
would like to get back together to make a new game. We wanted to
get the word out that we're interested in re-grouping. The 25th
and 30th anniversaries of Samurai Shodown are
approaching, so we expect that people will be reaching out to us
in some form or another. We don't want to make another Samurai
Shodown game, but a new game with the original members of the
Samurai Shodown team.
Polygon:
That's cool. Is this
something you want to work with SNK on, or are you just trying to
drum up general interest in this idea?
YA:
No, we're not in talks with SNK. We just want to stimulate an
interest.
Polygon:
Aren't a lot of the
original Samurai Shodown members at Engines now?
YA:
Yes, there are many of us here. Engines is a mix of former Samurai
Shodown, King of Fighters and Mega Man team
members.
Polygon:
And you want to bring
them all back?
YA:
Yes. Many of them are already here at Engines. It's my company,
but I care more about the project and bringing all the members
back together than about working with the company. I'd like to
develop the project as "the former developers of Samurai
Shodown."
The
former Samurai gumi members still keep in touch and are still
close friends. We would like reunite the original Samurai
Shodown development team and make a new game together again.
We imagine the game to be a combination of an action game, with
swords and martial arts, and a spiritual theme that incorporates
Buddhist and Shinto ideologies. We look forward to celebrating the
25th and 30th anniversaries [2018 and 2023 respectively] of the
release of Samurai Shodown. It gives me a lot of pleasure
to think that Samurai Shodown might have played a part in
introducing Japanese culture to the world.
(Check
out the full interview HERE.) |
✔ Worth
mentioning... Back in November
2016, TEKKEN producer Katsuhiro Harada expressed that he'd love
to work on a Samurai Shodown reboot. (A collaboration of some sort
would be simply amazing.) In any case, everyone seems to be begging for a Samurai
Shodown reboot.
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