Samurai Shodown II

I have very fond memories of this game. I used to play it when I was in high school in the arcades, along with Samurai Shodown, several Street Fighter games, Dark Stalkers, X-Men: Children of the Atom, and others. What I remember most about Samurai Shodown II is that I never beat it.

I never even came close. And the same went for Samurai Shodown.

So when I bought a Wii and the Wii Shop Channel had this title, I knew I had to go for it.

I've been playing it on and off for a while and this time it was not much different. I suck.

I still enjoy this game, but it's difficult. Unlike Street Fighter and many other Capcom fighting games, Samurai Shodown is very unpredictable. Your attacks do wildly different amounts of damage from one moment to the next. Sometimes it feels like the more slow-down there is, the more damage your character inflicts. The characters behave erratically and it's seriously hard to anticipate what they're going to do. The controller inputs are not super precise.

I still love this game.

I don't know if it's merely nostalgia or what. There is so much personality in these games that I just can't help it. I haven't downloaded Samurai Shodown as of yet (let's face it, the last thing I need is MORE games), but I suspect I will. I haven't mastered all the characters. I have barely beaten it once with Haomaru, but I don't really care.

Small point of interest, at least to me, is that this game taught me my first lessons in Japanese phonetics and phonology. I'll elaborate: each of the characters' names get called out when the match begins, say "Galford versus Cham Cham" or "Charlotte versus Tam Tam." However, that first match up was called out as Garufodo and Chamu Chamu, whereas the second one sounded like Charuroto and Tamu Tamu. Japanese is a language highly controlled by its syllables and I started to notice that every syllable in Japanese must end in a vowel sound (with the exception of N). Therefore, Gal·ford has to be changed to Ga·ru·fo·do. Char·lotte becomes Cha·ru·ro·to. I also started to notice the love/hate relationship between the Japanese language and the L sound. It's not that they don't have L's or even that they switch L's for R's. It's that those two sounds are nearly indistinguishable to a Japanese person. This is problematic because the Japanese love to include foreign words in their own speech. If there is one ridiculous thing I love (ha!) it is taking English words and phrases and figuring out what they would sound like if a Japanese person said them. It's silly. It's stupid. I am both of those things so it's amusing to me.

Anyway, there it is. I have Samurai Shodown II. I beat it with one character. One day I'll go back and play it with more characters and even download the original. It takes me back to my high school days when my life was ruled by fighting games. Except Mortal Kombat. I never really did play that one a whole lot. Anyway. Moving on. Up next, Shadow of the Colossus.