Over its lifetime, Super Play reviewed more Super Nintendo games than any other magazine in the United Kingdom - 596 to be precise - so picking a sixth of them, let alone the order of merit, would never be an easy task. This past month, a new series here at Postcards of Pop Culture began, providing an overview of all 100 titles from Super Play’s ranking from bottom to top. And while Super Play’s word was regarded among the most reliable around, it wasn’t the only one with an opinion. Next up, its the SNK port, Samurai Shodown.
The Super Play overview provided in last month’s post was from the top 100 itself. The verdict from issue #28, reviewed as a Japanese import at the time, read as such:-
“A jolly good beat-em-up, but you’ll want more for your money, and you’ll wonder if there isn’t more, hiding in the vastness of the 32 megs. Still, it’s fast, different and packed with moves, combos and weirdness. Wealthy fighting fans, here you go.”
This matches up with the top 100 overview, although was not reviewed again for what may well have been a slower UK version. Next up is Nintendo Magazine System, who gave an ever so slightly higher score of 85% in the same month:-
“An excellent conversion with buckets of gameplay but lacks the pace and intensity of Mortal Kombat II or Fatal Fury Special”
Interestingly, NMS reviewed Shodown three months earlier than Super Play, under its Western name, despite there being no date for release at the time for review. Interestingly, Shodown was released a week or so ahead of Spirits, its Japanese market naming equivalent. It would not release in the UK until sometime in 1994, with at the time of writing, no confirmed release date recorded.
What about Total! magazine? Well, who knows, as they didn’t even review it! In fact, Super Play and NMS were the only UK publications of the time that reviewed the game. As stated within the revisit post earlier this month, only a die hard collector or fan of literally anything SNK is going to want this, given the availability of the arcade-perfect original on today’s platforms.
Samurai Shodown’s limited review base means its average sits at a nice 85.5%, which is high, particularly across the strong fighting game base of the Super Nintendo. NMS’s comparison with Fatal Fury Special is key, as was another strong SNK entry for the console, scoring 92%. Super Play didn’t review this one, which is surprising given the first two were, but Paragon Publishing’s Super Gamer did, giving it an incredibly low 37% percent?!
NMS reviewer Paul Davies (presumably) said of Fatal Fury Special:-
“An excellent one-on-one fighting game sporting great graphics and playability. Doesn’t quite steal the Streetfighter throne but sits comfortably at the side.”
However, over at Super Gamer, Keith Pullin had this to say:-
“Put simply, Fatal Fury Special, isn’t. The graphics are the same as always (rough and lacking detail) and despite some new moves (which are similar to the old ones anyway) the game fails to excite in any way. Luckily, because it’s an import, you’re not going to come into contact with this game too easily, so whatever you do, don’t go looking for it! Avoid if you can and sleep easy with the fact that you’ll never have to play it! Unfortunately, I had to.”
And with that, Shodown’s SNK SNES brethren achieves an average UK review score of just 64.5%. Brutal. Personally, I found Fatal Fury Special to be the better game, but it definitely lost out to a lack of exposure. Shodown on the other hand had greater appeal being the first of its type on Ninendo’s console, with Fatal Fury fading into the shadows as an also-ran sequel.