Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection Review

"The Ultimate Samurai Brawling Package"

Campaign

August 6, 2020 at 6:46pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a really interesting compilation package that includes six NEOGEO titles alongside a mysterious unreleased game. It’s definitely the ultimate classic collection of older Samurai Shodown titles, and a must have for fans of the series. Each of the titles from the original to five (with variants) is included here. They have their original arcade mode options, alongside having versus. This can be played in local multiplayer, or also online multiplayer too which is nice.

Aside from the pile of the games being provided here, there’s also a museum that’s packed with content. It’s an area with over two thousand development documents and images. Hours of interviews with the developers and it’s sort of just a treat to sift through if that’s your thing. It’s honestly impressive, and I love that these older packages are starting to have more extra historic content with them.

If you’re a fan of the music, there’s a soundtrack music player with over two hundred tracks that span all six titles. If you’re not familiar with the franchise, these are samurai focused fighting games. There’s a roster of characters that grows with each entry, and it’s all about battling it out. Some light narrative elements are included as well, and it’s neat to see a sense of visual progression across the various games that are included here. It’s also great that both English and Japanese versions are included here for each title.

Gameplay

The visuals are sharp, the controls are tight and it’s neat to see how the aesthetics change between each release in this. It’s hard to really dive deep into the visual elements on older games, as they are products of their time and are generally presented in very pleasing way here. The colors pop, and the shines of each edge are sharpened. On top of that, there are minor adjustment options too.

You can choose from a series of borders if you’d like, force the aspect ratio and adjust other minor settings. They’ve also added a saving feature if that’s something you’re into. It features a clean menu for switching between the titles, and for interacting with the games. As mentioned prior this package also supports multiplayer action, with offline and online options for playing against others.

The Conclusion

The Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection is a really great package for fans of the series, and a good historic piece in regards to the many behind the scenes assets that it includes. It’s really quite an impressive offering, and I was surprised to see so much included in here. You get the history of the games, and it’s neat to see how they were upgraded as time went by.

The same concept, but an evolution in the style and what it provided with each new release. This is definitely a neat package to experience that’s stuffed with extras to make it feel just that much more special. It was cool to take a look at what’s available, and they were fun to play.

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Samurai Shodown NEOGEO Collection Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by 47

Rating Overall: 8.0