parallaxscroll
02-25-2014, 09:59 PM
Street Fighter IV. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Popular, modern titles with established communities. But what of the lesser-knowns, the hidden gems, the fighting games with great ideas that never found a foothold in the West, or at all? This article series aims to find those games, talk to the players who love them, and figure out what makes them worth playing competitively, even today.
First up:
Deep Cuts – Why Samurai Shodown V Special is the Best Fighting Game You’ve Never Played (http://shoryuken.com/2014/02/25/deep-cuts-why-samurai-shodown-v-special-is-the-best-fighting-game-youve-never-played/)
Twenty years ago, Samurai Shodown sliced its way into our hearts. Thanks to the title’s character and atmosphere, SS received four numbered releases on the legendary Neo Geo arcade hardware before developer SNK succumbed to bankruptcy in 2001. A few years later, the franchise came under the stewardship of strategy game developer Yuki Enterprise, who made Samurai Shodown V in 2003 and Samurai Shodown V Special in 2004 — the latter of which was considered by series fans to be the deepest, most competitively balanced entry in series history.
Why is V Special so highly regarded? Which characters and tactics define high level play, and how do they fit into the game’s ecosystem as a whole? What makes SSV Special so… special? I spoke to SamSho specialists Patrick “Mauve” McCarthy and Uesugi Kengou to find out.
Expert Bio: Patrick McCarthy, also known as mauve, is an aspiring independent game developer. He made a name for himself in certain circles of the fighting game community after developing the RollCaster netplay client in 2010, which grafted GGPO-like silky-smooth netplay onto cult-favorite PC fighting game Immaterial and Missing Power. He’s also a very skilled and knowledgeable Samurai Shodown V Special player, and helped write much of the Mizuumi wiki dedicated to the game. You can follow him on twitter at @mauvecow.
Jason Moses: The Samurai Shodown series never quite seemed to settle into a niche, design-wise. Some entries were very traditional and footsies-based, while others were much more combo-focused and experimental. Where does Samurai Shodown V fit in the series history, design-wise?
Patrick McCarthy: SSV as a whole leans towards being about careful, aggressive movement. Between the short timer (60 seconds flat) forcing the players’ hands and the distribution of damage being heavily slanted towards taking advantage of the opponent’s decision-making, there really isn’t much downtime in the footsies. Poking may be strong, but a well-placed fierce slash will ruin anyone’s day more than most combos will!
To put it in context with the rest of the series, it’s a cross between SS2, which is very much a footsies game above everything else, and SS3, which tried to spice things up a bit with greater movement and defensive options.
JM: When did you start playing Samurai Shodown V Special?
PM: Probably back in 2006 or so. My friend Pockets (not to be confused with Hellpockets) and I were checking out various fighting games at the time and we both got hooked on it from the nice, crunchy way it felt and the really diverse cast.
JM: What are the biggest differences between vanilla SSV and SSV Special? You’ve mentioned elsewhere that they fleshed out a few of the broken or unfinished characters between the two versions, but are there are any other notable changes?
PM: Think of Special like a balance patch that adds a few characters and fixes a number of crash bugs. The most notable balance changes were that they fixed Yunfei’s infinite fly glitch and Yoshitora was all-around nerfed but still strong.
Mechanically, there were two major changes. The first was to the State of Nothingness and Issen systems — In Vanilla, the triangle starts right next to the timer, while in Special, it starts farther away but charges up slower when you meditate, meaning it’s more viable to play without spending most of the match building it up.
The rest is here:
http://shoryuken.com/2014/02/25/deep-cuts-why-samurai-shodown-v-special-is-the-best-fighting-game-youve-never-played/
First up:
Deep Cuts – Why Samurai Shodown V Special is the Best Fighting Game You’ve Never Played (http://shoryuken.com/2014/02/25/deep-cuts-why-samurai-shodown-v-special-is-the-best-fighting-game-youve-never-played/)
Twenty years ago, Samurai Shodown sliced its way into our hearts. Thanks to the title’s character and atmosphere, SS received four numbered releases on the legendary Neo Geo arcade hardware before developer SNK succumbed to bankruptcy in 2001. A few years later, the franchise came under the stewardship of strategy game developer Yuki Enterprise, who made Samurai Shodown V in 2003 and Samurai Shodown V Special in 2004 — the latter of which was considered by series fans to be the deepest, most competitively balanced entry in series history.
Why is V Special so highly regarded? Which characters and tactics define high level play, and how do they fit into the game’s ecosystem as a whole? What makes SSV Special so… special? I spoke to SamSho specialists Patrick “Mauve” McCarthy and Uesugi Kengou to find out.
Expert Bio: Patrick McCarthy, also known as mauve, is an aspiring independent game developer. He made a name for himself in certain circles of the fighting game community after developing the RollCaster netplay client in 2010, which grafted GGPO-like silky-smooth netplay onto cult-favorite PC fighting game Immaterial and Missing Power. He’s also a very skilled and knowledgeable Samurai Shodown V Special player, and helped write much of the Mizuumi wiki dedicated to the game. You can follow him on twitter at @mauvecow.
Jason Moses: The Samurai Shodown series never quite seemed to settle into a niche, design-wise. Some entries were very traditional and footsies-based, while others were much more combo-focused and experimental. Where does Samurai Shodown V fit in the series history, design-wise?
Patrick McCarthy: SSV as a whole leans towards being about careful, aggressive movement. Between the short timer (60 seconds flat) forcing the players’ hands and the distribution of damage being heavily slanted towards taking advantage of the opponent’s decision-making, there really isn’t much downtime in the footsies. Poking may be strong, but a well-placed fierce slash will ruin anyone’s day more than most combos will!
To put it in context with the rest of the series, it’s a cross between SS2, which is very much a footsies game above everything else, and SS3, which tried to spice things up a bit with greater movement and defensive options.
JM: When did you start playing Samurai Shodown V Special?
PM: Probably back in 2006 or so. My friend Pockets (not to be confused with Hellpockets) and I were checking out various fighting games at the time and we both got hooked on it from the nice, crunchy way it felt and the really diverse cast.
JM: What are the biggest differences between vanilla SSV and SSV Special? You’ve mentioned elsewhere that they fleshed out a few of the broken or unfinished characters between the two versions, but are there are any other notable changes?
PM: Think of Special like a balance patch that adds a few characters and fixes a number of crash bugs. The most notable balance changes were that they fixed Yunfei’s infinite fly glitch and Yoshitora was all-around nerfed but still strong.
Mechanically, there were two major changes. The first was to the State of Nothingness and Issen systems — In Vanilla, the triangle starts right next to the timer, while in Special, it starts farther away but charges up slower when you meditate, meaning it’s more viable to play without spending most of the match building it up.
The rest is here:
http://shoryuken.com/2014/02/25/deep-cuts-why-samurai-shodown-v-special-is-the-best-fighting-game-youve-never-played/