Fighting Games Friday: Everyone’s Known for Samurai Shodown

SNK announced the new Samurai Shodown title at Tokyo Game Show in September last year, and revealed several returning characters right at the start of the promotional cycle. Some were highlighted in the first trailer, while others were part of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it collage. This was contrary to how other fighting games have been promoted in the last decade, which have involved announcing a small amount of characters initially and slowly revealing the rest of the cast over several weeks. Note that this includes SNK themselves, which abided by this strategy with The King of Fighters XIV. When SNK announced so many characters for Samurai Shodown at once, several fans (me included) assumed they did so because the game would have a sizable cast — though not one on par with a KoF game.

That’s actually not the case. SNK provided a clue about the marketing method they planned to go with through the teaser shown during the Evo lineup announcement stream in February, which didn’t reveal any new characters. Its nature as a “teaser” let fans think it was just a small part of a longer trailer due sometime afterward, which turned out not to be the case.

This is all part of a unique promotional method here, as SNK officially revealed all the returning characters just before its showcase at PAX East in Boston two weeks ago. They confirmed that several popular characters from the old mainline games are returning, while Shiki is = joining from the 3D games thanks to her popularity in the company’s crossover fighters. The game will also have three new characters, for a total of 16 initial cast members. The three were revealed in a new trailer — on the franchise’s new YouTube channel, at that.

The first new character is Darli Dagger, who was shown in artwork at the PAX East panel before this. She’s a shipwright who washed ashore on an island as a child and learned how to use various weapons and tools from carpenters and pirates to survive and protect herself. She wields a giant cleaver-looking blade and dons an outfit that doesn’t leave much to the imagination, and has braided purple hair, an appearance I’m sure is historically accurate for the late 17th century.

Second is Wu-Ruixiang, a descendant of the Feng Shui clan who serves the Qing Dynasty and travels to locations at the command of the emperor. Despite her job and intelligence, she’s also a clumsy recluse who dreads exercising, though she appears to be fit. Her fighting style primarily revolves around the use of several mid-to-long-range techniques, including summoning beasts and dragons. It should make for an effective, if unique, move set in a game that resembles previous installments (Samurai Shodown IV notwithstanding) in not being reliant on combos.

The final new character is Yashamaru Kurama, a fallen samurai who’s become a chivalrous thief who takes from those who exploit and rob from the poor for their own gain. Most of his hatred is directed towards Shogunate, who executed his father on false charges. He uses a memento nagamaki sword (a blade with an extra-long handle) and wields the power of the tengu, as evinced through his tengu mask. It’s not a ninja mask upon closer inspection, so he won’t be a rival to returning character Hanzo Hattori.

This marketing strategy could be a good one, since it will give SNK the opportunity to focus on showing off all the characters through streams and gameplay videos between now and its release. They recently provided a short trailer for Nakoruru, and plan to provide videos for each character from here on. Character reveals tend to excite fans the most during the promotional cycle, but there’s a good chance SNK did this to get ahead of potential leaks. The entire cast for KOFXIV was leaked months before SNK finished revealing them, and the same occurred with SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. No need to worry about that this time.

It wouldn’t be a fighting game release in 2019 if it didn’t have a Season Pass for downloadable content characters, of which there will be four. If this was being marketed like any other fighting game, there would be no chance of them being revealed before the game releases, since they aren’t planned to arrive until August, October, December, and February of next year. There’s a chance they might want to get ahead of potential leaks again, but they also want to save something for Evo.

The game will also have non-character DLC in the form of retro character models, which have been revealed for Haohmaru and Naokuru. They look close to, though not quite on par with, the models from the Samurai Shodown 64 games from the late 90s. In Japan, the Haohmaru model will be included for those who purchase the standard edition shortly after launch or the deluxe pack, while Nakoruru’s will be included with the deluxe pack or Season Pass. SNK has yet to confirm how they’ll include these for western territories.

Samurai Shodown will release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on June 27th in Japan, while the western release is planned for a general June timeframe on both those platforms. It will release in arcades later in the summer, and will subsequently arrive for Switch and PC during the winter. The game is only two-and-a-half months away from release, so expect SNK to show it often in the weeks ahead.