Samurai Shodown III: Blades of Blood

The Good
It's Shodown on the PlayStation. Seriously, it's Shodown on the PlayStation.

Honestly, I have no positives to give.

The Bad
First, right after the PlayStation BIOS ROM start up with the sound, and right after the "Sony Computer Entertainment Presents" screen, what do you get? NoW LoAdInG just like that, bouncing in an out towards you. LAME! On the Saturn and Neo-Geo CD versions, there's a little anime graphic and the progress bar going across. True, all versions take like five minutes to load, but still, by the time it loads and the intro starts, I forget what game I'm playing. Seriously. Then, the intro is lame.

The sounds are as bad a Genesis or that semi-decent version on 3DO. Scratchy, off-key, mono. I thought the PlayStation, according to the arrogant Tommy Tallirico, had the most powerful sound processor ever. So why does the sound effects quality suffer? Not enough RAM in that there PlayStation? Strange, but the PlayStation does have more RAM than the Neo-Geo CD . . . SNK and Sony were lazy.

Hey, the music's in standard Audio CD format. Hey, it's so bad, you wouldn't know it. Again, why the "tape recorder through a cup on the side of the arcade machine" quality? Why? Shodown's much is very Yanni and nice to listen to. Not this version.

The graphics are low-res. Hey, the zooming feature is here. Cool! But that's about it. Even when zoomed, the graphics look low-res, muddy, dark, pixelated, confused, smudgy, blurred, and crappy. I swear, also, Hoahmaru is washes out. Seems like it.

The play control suffers. I swear it's loose or laggy . . . maybe both? No! That's not fair! I had nothing but trouble pulling off moves I can do on the Saturn version with ease. I want to beat up the programmers at SNK for this! This is a disappoint after the better-than-Saturn version of King of Fighters 95. I used different characters and even played with friends of mine. Nothing. That game stinks.

Lastly, the NoW LoAdInG screen! It's so bad, I have to mention it again. It occurs EVERYWHERE! I'm serious. Oh, lastly lastly, the case says we can save data. Yeah, right. I've never been able to save the data. Ever.

The Bottom Line
SNK's worst hour. True, the PlayStation, from a programmer's viewpoint, is above the Neo-Geo CD in power, equal to the 3DO, below the Saturn for sheer numbers crunching, and way below the Jaguar and N-64, but Jaguar . . . anyways, so the hardware isn't a problem. I mean the graphics of the Gear Gear version looks like the arcade of the first game. No excuse. The shoddy controls, the bad sound/music . . . no, this really is SNK's worst hour of gaming. I have a feeling, for people who bought this game on their PlayStations, "WHOA! Dude, there's Shodown for the 'Station! WHOA!" And the other dude, "Get it, man! So get it! We so enjoyed that on the Super NES!" only to get, "ARGH! RETURN IT!" It's that bad.

(Did I mention the NoW LoAdInG screens that are everywhere?)

I recommend the Saturn import, NeoRAGE XP emulation, using some other version in the series, the Neo-Geo originals and stuff. Stay away from this version!