adventures like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound, and... well, whatever the heck Out of This

World was. But as we’ve seen, time and again, one piece of fruit was just out of reach:

the SNK fighter. They were cooking for their own super-premium arcade hardware, after all,

and leaving the weaker home consoles (read: those costing less than 600 bucks) to fight

over the scraps. As a result, the non-rich among us got fairly lackluster ports of otherwise

great games like Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. (We’ll leave World Heroes off to the side,

because who are we trying to kid.) Behold then, Samurai Showdown and/or Spirits, as

it was never meant to be: Tiny sprites and more lag than Quake on a 14.4 modem.

In the style of pretty much every SNK game of the era that didn’t have the words “Metal

Slug” included somewhere, your goal is to beat the bejeezus out of your opponent, most

likely using some manner of sword. It might be a katana. It might be a rapier. It might

be a bird... no, wait, that’s just Nakoruru. I wish I could say more about the gameplay,

because I actually played a good bit of Samurai Showdown back in the day, but this Super Famicom

version kinda mangles it beyond recognition. I realize that the pace of the game itself

is a bit slower and more deliberate than other, more combo-heavy offerings, and that’s by

design. But the bottom line is... this version just doesn’t work very well at all. It’s

more an exercise in frustration, and why we should count our lucky stars we have much

more faithful emulations of the arcade original available to us today. Heck, even the chronology

doesn’t make sense. According to the interwebs, this first game in the series is meant to

take place in the spring and summer of the year 1788. If this is the case, the two “American”

fighters, hailing from Texas and San Francisco, should rightly be Spanish, as America hadn’t

really gotten that far yet. C’mon, Japan. History books.

Returning from Fatal Fury is the License mode, where you’ve got no health bar and a mandate

to pummel your way through as many oncomers as possible within a three-minute time limit.

It’s a mode I liked then and I still do; I just wish the mechanics were such that it

wasn’t just three minutes of beating my head against a wall. So what did this game

leave me with? Honestly, after fighting Hanzo, all I could think was, “Man, I miss Nagase.

I haven’t played King of Fighters 2006 in almost a year.” Honestly, just pick up Samurai

Showdown Anthology for the Wii or PS2, or download it for your PSP. I think we’ve

proven Neo-Geo’s hardware dominance, at least in that moment in history for that genre.

I’m gonna go drown my fears and convictions in Clay Fighter.