With the return of SNK to the fighting game fold and the relative success of The King of Fighters it’s only a matter of time before we see the highly anticipated return of the fighting game title, Samurai Shodown. In fact we have heard from various sources that a series revival is due sometimes soon. Back in the day, Samurai Shodown was another big hit next to the King of Fighters and Garou: Mark of the Wolves, when SNK was just kind of…Vomiting out fighting game titles left and right, and with a model for Nakoruru (Eugh) in the King of Fighters XIV already, it seems like a very real possibility that a Samurai Showdown game is on the horizon, so what a missed opportunity it would be to not talk about the things that we want such a game to have.

5. 3D Models and 2D Gameplay

The era of sprites has kind of gone out the window, hasn’t it? Also Nakoruru’s 2D model is fairly well made, and given the fact that letting it go to waste would be something of a crime, it would serve the next Samurai Shodown well to be 2.5D. It is important that SNK does it’s best to try and keep up with the modern fighting games it competes with, and since they’ve gone on record to say that making sprites is both expensive and time consuming, and they’d have to make new ones to match the graphic fidelity of the console(s) the game is going to be on, it seems like trying to go the whole sprite route might not end with a net gain for the company. SNK should take Dragon Ball FighterZ as a source of inspiration as it blends the anime and 3d aspect quite well. And if the recent rumor about Neo Geo Battle Coliseum 2 is true, then it is fair to Sair that Cell shaded anime graphics might soon be a staple of SNK Games.

4. A Good Roster Size

Samurai Shodown V had 24 characters and a hidden character (Poppy). Twenty five characters is nothing to scoff at and looking at how many characters they put into the King of Fighters XIV (So far) they clearly have no issue putting large amounts of characters into their game. I wasn’t going to sit here and say that they should have fifty characters in it but it’s unlikely that people will complain about about a twenty five character roster. Twenty five is also a good number because it means that they can easily shove multiple different playstyles in the game, without overloading any single character to the point of being ridiculously powerful, something that has happened in fighting games before. It’s also leads to another point I’m going to make very soon.

3. Ensure Some Semblance of Balance

A big complain about the Samurai Shodown series was its balance, or lack thereof. These days, unless your game is named “Marvel” some form of balance is a must. The recent patch support behind The King of Fighters XIV shows that SNK is willing to pursue balance in the most healthy way possible for fighting games. What I mean by that is that they’re willing to buff to scale, as opposed to nerfing, buffing is the best way to handle fighting games, regardless of your opinion on the matter, and it would appear that they have taken that fact to heart. Here’s hoping a Samurai Showdown would follow the same trend.

2. Bloody Sword Battle and Finishers 

Do you remember playing the first two Samurai Shodown games and being surprised by your opponent getting, literally, torn into 2 pieces by your final blow? Samurai Shodown definitely had its own share of violence. The series took it up a notch in Samurai Shodown 5 special with character specific fatalities that were really welcomed by fans. We hope for this next iteration to bring back these finishers and go the extra mile of giving each character more options on how to end the battle

1. Dedicated Support

I doubt this is something that SNK will have trouble with, as I mentioned already, they’ve shown that they’re willing to put their all into balancing the King of Fighters, but it’s important that they don’t let Samurai Showdown be a game they leave as a backburner side project. It’s going to have it’s own playerbase as well as crossover from KOF, they need to ensure that they treat it with all the support it deserves. Balance Patches, Bugfixes and more all need to be available and quickly administered to the game in the event that it’s necessary.

That’s it for our list, what do you hope to see from a new Samurai Shodown? Let us know in the comments and for more on Samurai Showdown, make sure to follow us @FGCNow