Samurai Shodown

aka: Nettō Samurai Spirits, Samurai Shodown 1, Samurai Spirits
Moby ID: 7255

SEGA CD version

A great translation of the Neo Geo original.

The Good
Between the Genesis version and the SNES version of the game, the Sega CD version is the one to get. The game features the original intro with speech as well as ALL cinematics. The zooming camera is missing, but like the Genesis version, and unlike the SNES version, the camera is zoomed in, providing the player with huge, detailed characters. 12 of 13 characters are present for this version, just like the Genesis version. The missing character is Earthquake. The reason he is not present is do to his large sprite size. The Sega CD maximum sprite size is 32 x 32 pixels. Earthquake's sprite size run around 16 x 512 pixels, that is huge, and would not fit on the Sega CD memory. Is true that the SNES version has him, but that's because the camera is always zoomed out, providing players with much smaller characters. Anyway, the character sprites look 99% identical to the Neo Geo original game. Most of there animations are present, but some are missing. The game features more animations then the Genesis version, but a bit less then the SNES version. Also, the blood is present as well as 1 out of 2 fatalities. The first fatality is one where blood gushes out of the character that lost, while the second is when a character gets cut in half. The latter one is missing. The backgrounds are beautiful and are not compressed like the Genesis version. There are lots of detail in the backgrounds as will as being quite colorful. Is not to say that all colors are present however. Both the Genesis and Sega CD only have 512 available colors. Versus 32,768 for the SNES and 65,536 for the Neo Geo. Of those colors, both the Genesis and Sega CD could only do 64 on screen, versus the SNES at 256 colors and Neo Geo at 4,096 colors on screen. However, the Sega CD uses a feature called color compression scheme, which allows it to display over 128 colors on-screen. It's still less then the other consoles, but it's enough to make the game look vibrant. Almost all background character sprites are present as well with most of there animations, but the referee is missing for some reason. The music in the game is arcade perfect. A direct port of the original. Even the background sound fx made it faithfully. The controls are perfect if using the 6 botton control pad. It plays identical to the Genesis version, which is to say, awsome. Control is smooth and the action is fast.

The Bad
The thing I did not like about this version was the voices and sounds. All character dialogs are present. However, the announcer dialogs are missing. The only time he announces something is when he calls on the character names, that's it. All the sound fx are there but with one major issue that also plagues the voices. The quality is awful. It's as if they were sampled in a really low frequency. The voices sound a little better then the Genesis version but no where near as good as the SNES version. And the sound FX quality is bad. Both the Genesis and SNES has better sound fx quality. The background sound fx are great, but that's because they are streaming right of the CD. It's still pretty bad considering that this is a CD platform and that Sega CD has more audio memory then both Genesis and SNES combined. Another cool feature missing is the interactive backgrounds, and Earthquake. Although it is understandable of why he's missing. The loading time is kind of long, but it's still not to bad.

The Bottom Line
The only negative things about this version is the sound, missing interactive backgrounds, and Earthquake not being present. Other then that, it is the better version of the three (Genesis, SNES, Sega CD). Get it!

by Luis Arocho (2) on October 17, 2003

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