Samurai Shodown: Warriors Rage

For the 1998 Hyper Neo Geo 64 game, see Samurai Shodown 64: Warriors Rage.

The third game with 3D rendered graphics in the series, Samurai Shodown: Warriors Rage is a game full of history that unfortunately has many flaws. Firstly, the graphics were far beyond other titles at the time and the game contains many evident polygonal breaks, in addition to the scenarios being uninspired and very poorly animated in some cases. The only highlight here is that the game runs with 60 fluent animation frames.

The combat system itself isn't bad, but there was a lack of better balance between the characters. Speaking of which, it's always good to remember that SNK wanted to start a new generation of warriors with this game and therefore only Haohmaru and Hanzo are returnable characters from previous games, while all the other characters are new. This is good because it gives you the chance to get to know the new characters through their story within the game, but at the same time, it can be bad for those who can't let go. One of the biggest crimes, for example, was the absence of Nakoruru and Shiki, with Nakoruru only appearing in the intro.

The commercial failure of that game and Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition on PlayStation ended up culminating in the cancellation of another 3D game from SNK coming from its Hyper NeoGeo 64 arcade card: Buriki One. Although you see that in these games there is a lot of commitment and passion from the producers, the execution of the ideas was not even remotely comparable to their classic titles released for Neo Geo.

The Samurai Shodown series has only had one 3D title come back with Samurai Shodown Sen, another failure title.