Having made the decision to move away from monster characters, Adachi decided on a historical setting for the game. Through this connection players will feel more motivated to protect their characters during battle, and have a strong and memorable gameplay experience with the life and death concept and the unique combatants in the game.' Therefore, players won't see and play characters as 'icons', but will see them as living, breathing people. The second was to have a deep and detailed background and storyline for every character. Characters wouldn't be beaten by fi sts, but would lose their life via blades/weapons, giving more impact and tension to the player's experience. 'The first was to introduce the notions of living and dying. 'In order to challenge the most popular fighting game of this era, we knew there were two things we had to do,' explains Adachi. With the concept of creating a fighting game now set in stone, the team looked to find ways of differentiating its game from the crowd. Why was the original concept so radically changed? According to Yasushi Adachi, director of Samurai Shodown, it had a lot to do with Street Fighter II: 'After experiencing the dynamism of the fighting game that was dominating the arcade and console game scene at that time, we asked ourselves what kind of game design we could do, and decided to challenge that masterpiece!' Instead it was to be a scrolling beat-'em-up, more in the manner of a game like Sengoku – and rather than featuring samurai characters, the main heroes were monsters.

The funny thing about Samurai Shodown was that initially it wasn't meant to be a one-on-one fighting game at all.

Samurai shodown 4 combos