New Details Unveiled On The Upcoming Arcade Version Of Samurai Shodown V Perfect

arcadehero May 5, 2022 0
New Details Unveiled On The Upcoming Arcade Version Of Samurai Shodown V Perfect

Back in August of last year, the news came out that SNK was joining up with exA-Arcadia as a partner, which would mean that SNK titles would once again grace arcades around the world (not just in Japan, where they had been doing so for many years). The first and so far only title announced as a part of that deal is Samurai Shodown V Perfect and today we have more details to discuss about this upcoming release.

For those unfamiliar with the story, SSVP was originally slated for a release on the Neo Geo MVS back in 2003 but almost as soon as it went on test it was canceled and promptly forgotten. It was meant to improve on certain elements of Samurai Shodown V, while bringing 28 playable characters to the roster, which included every boss from previous installments. The loss of the game changed when it was rediscovered during an interview with the original creator Kouji Takaya; The game was localized and released to consoles back in 2020 as a part of the Samurai Shodown Collection.

So now to the arcade version – what, if anything, is going to be different about it? Some news on that was revealed today during a special Samurai Shodown event at the Mikado Arcade in Tokyo. Here’s a video of that event which starts off with some discussion on the platform itself before getting into SSV. Note that it’s all in Japanese; I have received some pertinent info about it on the side in English, although my Japanese is still far too basic to catch most of what is said:

Let’s break down what we know, although I’ve been told to expect more by the time the game releases this Summer.

  • 1 frame of input lag, making it the only version on par with the original MVS release
  • Character art is being done by Shiroh Ohno, the legendary visual designer who did the characters for Samurai Shodown III and the Samurai Shodown RPG. See below for the two examples shown.
  • New localization which cleans up/removes the “Engrish.” This includes a new stylized font face
  • Fleshed out storylines for each character
  • Additional gameplay balancing
  • 4K support for proper display on such monitors
  • Specialized art set (A1 poster, instruction card, as per usual with exA game kits)

Here’s a couple of pop-up/standee art sets revealed at the event, again drawn by Shiroh Ohno. I imagine these will be available like they were in a limited way with releases like Crimson Katana EXA. The reveal today focused on the characters Haohmaru and Nakoruru as you see here:

Samurai Showdown V Perfect character art

One slide in there was also showcasing the input lag frame rates (lower is better) of their current and upcoming fighting games; As you can see, the upcoming titles Axel City 2 and Dynamite Bomb!! are also running at only 1 frame of input lag, meaning the response times are lightning fast (comparable to an old tube CRT, although quality of your LCD panel and game mode feature is important in this instance too – this is just talking about from the software side, where exA has made this a priority and has faster response times than what you’d find on consoles or PC games where there’s usually 5+ frames of input lag)

When I played this at IAAPA 2021 it looked great but it was running in Japanese and hadn’t implemented most of the changes. It does allow for scanlines though, if you want to play it that way (which were also present in the stream capture above).

exA-Arcadia is planning on releasing this game in the Summer and will continue to reveal new info about this arcade version in the run-up to that launch.

What do you think about it from the event today?

 

 

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