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Samurai Shodown interview: Damaging and crazy

Shacknews sat down with Samurai Shodown director Nobuyuki Kuroki to chat about the upcoming revival of the fighting game.

Brittany Vincent

March 26, 2019 4:00 PM

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Looking for your next fighting game fix? Keep your eyes on the revival of an old classic: Samurai Shodown.

Nobuyuki Kuroki of SNK Division 1 (and the director of Samurai Shodown) spoke to Shacknews about the game's revival, and we came away with some interesting tidbits about the game's development, namely how it came about and what it focuses on.

"The world has a big focus on esports right now, and we also feel that Samurai Shodown is one of the more unique titles in the SNK library," said Kuroki of the reason the team is bringing the game back.

"It has a lot of big damaging hits, and feels like a game where you just laugh at how damaging and crazy it is sometimes. We put a lot of focus on pulling the best aspects of the series and putting them together in this new entry in the game series."

And what of the game's influences?

"In general, we focused on Japanese manga and old samurai films," Kuroki explained. "We paid a lot of attention to putting together the Japanese painting style, combined with what you can do with modern 3D graphics."

This modern version of Samurai Shodown is being developed in-house at SNK by the team that worked on King of Fighters XIV. It will come packing various game modes, including Story, Practice, Online Battle, and offline battle options if you're more keen on playing offline.

It will also feature a special new asynchronous online mode called Dojo that will use machine learning to create a new avatar that learns from player actions offline to be used for a Ghost AI fighter. The Ghost will then be uploaded to take on other challengers, as other players will be able to do as well. Players can fight Ghosts in 1v1 battle or do the Ironman Challenge to defeat 100 in one sitting.

Then, be sure to subscribe to Shacknews and the GamerHubTV channels on YouTube for the latest videos and news. You can also head back over ot our GDC 2019 hub for all the latest info from the conference.

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!