Something a little different today.
I've been following songpeng85's Youtube channel for a while now, as he has loads of SamSho match videos, and SamSho is always one of those SNK games that i've wanted to get into but never really understood how they play or worked.
Today he has uploaded a couple of matches of SamSho IV from Shang Hai, China.
The matches, even though i'm baffled as to what's going on, look pretty interesting and i've always heard the SamSho games are really deep games.
At one point i asked Jericho MPM to show me a couple of things on SamSho II, but because no one else really plays the game it's difficult to maintain a real interest to play it seriously.
If you check out some of the other videos on songpeng85's channel you can see some crazy stuff in SamSho II, like the characters suddenly turning chibi/SD.
![King Of Fighters [UK]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm3LptjRhSRsxpP0REEz1Kg3fAvOQ97jmS1se1ccWXYNeg7V-mbaQf4JJwTCdh5pA6t_TYWJrhObUNHpmy7sJHJAQIvldAQcHp9dIf4lKKzjfwKcD5lAqXMv1o7dljIPKgwrsJEqGVYtA/s400/banner+blog+2013+copy.jpg)
Aaaahh, Samurai Spirits; when it came down to it "this" was my SNK game, even more so than KoF.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that I always hated about the "so called fans" of the saga is that II and IV are the most praised games, when it fact are the two most broken entries on the series; when you actually get "good at them" the sheer amount of bugs, unblockables and pseudo infinites are really a bothersome thing to handle (for example, in IV slash Sogetsu has an infinite that works when it hits and when it's blocked, so as long as he touches you, you are dead. And he is not even the worst cheeseball of the gam)e. Conversely, V and V Special are the best of the saga when it comes to balance, but they are hated since "they reharsh too much" and "they aren't from SNK"; in fact V Special balance was so good, that pretty much there is no "character breaker".... How many fighting games actually have a balanced cast with no annoying top tiers? If I exaggerate, it's something around like 5 games in arcade history (and that's counting Karate Champion!), that really, really tells you something about the fandom of the game (like how 90% of the people that adore Last Blade in occident had no experience besides clearing the game).
BTW I remember making a post that gathered fight vids about the game in some other place ( http://www.mmcafe.com/cgi-bin/forums/bbs/messages/13161.shtml#52973 ). From the international communities that played the games I really liked the the Chinese and HK communities. I also remember seeing something like 10 years ago some really good games on Gamechariot I think, but I haven't be able to find them on youtube (you had to download the MPGEs then to see the fights); to bad that those are either buried in a pack of something like 2000 cds with no label in my room.
I've always read that II was the best one in the series as well, i never knew IV was considered one of the good ones too.
ReplyDeleteI've got V on the ps2, but havent played it for a while, maybe i should dig it up and give it a whirl this weekend.
V Special though i've never played, the AES and MVS carts cost a bit more than i would like to pay for. (I think mostly the mvs carts i've seen on eBay were bootlegs as well...)
What do you think of VI ? I've never played it but i've always liked the character design of Iroha xD
Thanks for the link and info, i'll check out the vids a bit later.
Since VI uses the backbone from the previous games and there are a lot of "right on" things with the game (for example, no character is able to press A or B till the end of time) we have a good background for the game; most of the new characters are kinda fun (I played a lot with Wan-fu, Niccottine and Sieger) and the console add ons were completely mind blowing and pretty much out-do every other SNK console port ever (something like 10 extra characters, plus new Kuroko plus extra selectable fighting modes and new game modes).... But, but! the game was "back" to the old SNK days of having a bunch of game breaking bugs hidden there that were really annoying and character balance isn't that good compared to V and V special (and that's even counting V Yoshitora, the so called "97' Iori" of the game).
ReplyDeleteBottom line is, they kept many of the interesting parts but by going out of their way, they ended up adding some really weird and bad things here and there; basically you had to play it as you played II and IV, where players had to physically agree to ignore bugs and infinites to have an actual gameplay experience. And you know deep down that there is always this guy that start using infinites and crap when the rope is tight around his neck even though he said that he wouldn't.
BTW, Iroha is the top tier of the game and in the arcade mode she had a bug where she could grab you from the floor and her DM was a high damage grab, so you get the picture. For what I remember she had this very "kof like feeling" compared to the rest of the cast, so she was pretty popular even without counting the big breasted fetish fuel birdo maid outfit.
Sounds good i'll have to try and pick up the anthology with VI on it at some point, just watching videos now and the game looks pretty gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteI do remember seeing one video of it years ago, which made it look kinda broken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-F221nwiug
hahaha maid fetish ftw xD
That combo video is made using one of the not very smart "new features" that the game has, which is when you hit a back turned enemy, you'll have that the hit stun is something like 3 times longer than normal; allowing all of those infinites. You'll notice that all combos came from VS mode instead of practice, this was so because it was needed for the 2P to use "taunt" and while the taunt was going on the 1P had to go behind them and infinite them to death. I think that the only combo that wasn't done behind the enemy was Amakusa's one, the last one of the vid.
ReplyDeleteSadly enough, that also "kinda happens" in a real fight, running behind an enemy when they jump or rolling behind an enemy when they tried to throw oftenly net you that circumstance.
Oh, and I'm more of the female buttler type, har har har.
Yeah i was reading the comments about how those combos were not possible in a real match.
ReplyDeleteIt did kinda dampen my opinion of the game though.
I'll probably start off with V though since i have that on ps2 right now (and barely touched it since i bought it).