Fighting Games Friday: SNK Still Has Plenty of Samurai Shodown Content to Advertise

The pattern of fighting game publishers revealing new characters on an intermittent basis between their announcements and releases has become a typical one for marketing campaigns for the genre’s titles, one that’s been standard for well over a decade. This is why it was a risky move for SNK to buck this trend with Samurai Shodown, where they revealed all the characters months before release. Only certain returning characters were focused on in the announcement trailer, while others were relegated to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses. But SNK pulled back the curtain on the remaining characters, returning and new, shortly after it was confirmed as one of the main showcases for Evo 2019.

Since this happened over a month ago, there’s been time to see how the campaign has worked out for them, and understand why they took this approach. This allowed them to get ahead of leaks, after The King of Fighters XIV’s promotional cycle was derailed by SNK’s figurative ship being rife with leaky holes. It was clear they didn’t plug all of them after Shiki’s appearance for this game was still leaked before they could confirm her. (Shiki’s appearance was a surprise because this will mark the first numbered game she’ll appear in, after she became popular from the earlier 3D Samurai Shodown games and crossover titles.) Fortunately, they have plenty of other content to promote.

Several new features were shown in the nearly-four-minute Return of a Legend trailer, one complete with cheesy narration and Japanese name mispronunciations on par with a 90s promotional VHS tape.

Samurai Shodown will have a Story Mode, where each character will have individual stories. The trailer shows how the scenarios will include animated scenes using the in-game models. But there’s no telling how robust the stories will be, and how many cutscenes will be presented in that style. We should get an idea of how long they’ll take to complete before the game releases, unless they’ve specifically embargoed these segments for previews and reviews — which would raise suspicions on its own. This installment will take place before the original 1993 Samurai Shodown, so there will be potential with exploring the origin stories for every character — serious or silly.

The game will, of course, also have online play, because there’s no such thing as a brand-new fighting game releasing in this day and age without it. There are no details on whether SNK has crafted a new netplay system that blows the pants off their previous efforts, a pity considering how the game needs this. It’s sadly become tradition for their games to release with online play that ranges from subpar-at-best to utterly pitiful, with KOFXIV leaning towards the former after patches, when it felt like the latter upon release.

Online play in these games and other grievous offenders turns out bad thanks to the network only being tested in Japan, where citizens are closely located to each other. This doesn’t work for a country like America, where everyone playing is spread far apart. These criticisms have existed for years, but here’s hoping this is the time they’ll get through. It’s tough to have faith when so many of their efforts have been letdowns.

Hopefully SNK gives the online netplay the attention it deserves, but there’s a semi-backup mode in case they don’t: Dojo Mode. This mode will allow for fighting the Ghosts of other players, AI-controlled characters whose play styles will mimic those from specific humans. They’ll work like Ghosts from other fighters like Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, which included a special mode where players fought ghosts based on data compiled from tournament players with varying skillsets. It was a fun and well-received mode, and it’s surprising that few fighting games have featured modes similar to it in the 15 years since that game released. Maybe — just maybe — this will be the game to establish the trend.

SNK revealed all the Samurai Shodown characters early, but that hasn’t stopped them from providing short videos demonstrating the cast. Only Nakoruru’s was available when I last posted about the game, but several have been released on a weekly basis since then. They’ve included new character Darli Dagger, Ukyo Tachibana, Shiki, Charlotte, Genjuro Kibagami, Haohmaru, and, most recently, also-new character Yashamaru. Videos for the remaining characters will come between now and the release date, but they should also provide trailers and gameplay videos further demonstrating the characters’ move sets. Ideally, some videos should come from the Samurai Shodown tournament players who always put on impressive-but-underappreciated displays for older games at Evo. There have already been videos like this, but more of them would make for good promotional opportunities as the release approaches.

It’s approaching soon, of course. Samurai Shodown will arrive on June 25th and June 27th in western territories and Japan, respectively, for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Switch and PC versions will arrive later in the year. Anyone who preorders the game digitally or physically will get the Season Pass for free, which will include four characters that will arrive in August, September, November, and February 2020. Whether SNK will introduce all the DLC characters at once months before they release like the initial cast remains to be seen.