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$20 Game of the Week: Samurai Showdown Anthology (Wii, PS2)
by William Talley, filed in $20 Game Of The Week, Games on Apr.23, 2009
Before SoulCalibur, Samurai Showdown bought weapon to weapon fighting to the fighting game genre. With the franchise’s historical Japan setting, progressively complex battle systems, and interesting cast of characters, the Samurai Showdown series stands as one of the fighting game genre’s most unique games, 2D or 3D. It also managed to create some controversy of its own, as fatality-style moves can chop players in half, leaving geysers of blood spraying (although these were censored from many American releases, causing even further controversy). As they have done with many of their other game series, SNK has collected Samurai Showdown in an anthology. This disc contains Samurai Showdown 1 – 5 as well as 6, making this the first time that the Atomswave-powered 6 is available in North America. As with most other SNK compilations, the game includes a color edit option, art gallery, and options to tweak the graphics and sound. All of your favorite characters are here, from Haomaru to Tam Tam, to Galford and Earthquake. The selectable fighting styles in games 2 – 6 make the game complex and deep, such to an extent that it might scare off fighting game newbies, but longtime fans of the series as well as fighting game aficionados will want to add this game to their collection.
BTW, this is also available on PSP, but it’s for $30, and it has longer loading times.
What would you do for a Powetcast? Stay up all night to edit and update the latest episode? One foolhardy Powet staffer did! Can you guess who?
1985 saw the release of one of the most influential arcade games of the past few decades. It was quite popular for its time. Matter of fact, you might have even heard about it, or if you’re old enough, you may have even played it. In the game, you (and a few friends) teamed up to smash a never-ending (well, at least until you destroyed the generators) stream of orcs, goblins, and other monsters in a fantasy setting. Your character’s health constantly ticked down, so grabbing food was a must. Also, there were several items spread around that could enhance your player. Players could either choose to cooperate with each other, or could work against each other to get the food and the high scores. This game was made by Atari and was known as Gauntlet. Though it’s simple by today’s standards, Gauntlet’s influence helped shape many other action RPG games, from Square’s Secret of Mana to Blizzard’s Diablo. However, a year after the release of Gauntlet, Konami released this game, Dark Adventure. While it had many similarities to Gauntlet, its high quality graphics, large sprites, and quirkiness made this game even better than Atari’s classic. Sadly, it wasn’t nearly as popular as it should have been.
One of the major complaints about the Wii is that Nintendo doesn’t cater to the hardcore gamer audience enough. I’m hard pressed to disagree, as I only own 4 games that aren’t Virtual Console titles, and one of them is a port of a 4-year old game whose sequel was just released this past March. With that having been said, I can’t believe how anyone, casual or hardcore alike, could have overlooked this 2008 title from Majesco/Budcat Creations. It’s a classic-style shooter with a very flexible set of creation tools. In fact, I’d almost go as far to say that this is the Wii’s answer to Sony’s Little Big Planet.
