Samurai Showdown for me was a series that not only captured my attention as a fighting game enthusiast, but also held a special place in my gaming history as one of the few arcade experiences that I had as a teenager. I remember playing the original arcade cabinet of SamSho at the local bowling alley as my family did their routine bowling. I also played on a rare 'Samurai Showdown III: Blades of Blood" arcade cabinet at the local Kmart department store back in the day when department stores had those special arcade rooms set aside for the children of customers. Of course I also bought SamShoIII when it was finally ported to the PSOne in the late 90's, because I loved it that much. The Treachery, and Chivalry finishers in SamShoIII were, in my opinion one of the series' finer points. A feature which was lost along the way as SamSho became an all inclusive, and censored shell of it's former glory. Don't get me wrong though. I did love the new character additions, and mechanics that came into play years down the road. The different "Spirits' meters opened up new opportunities in-game, as they tend to do. When the final 3D SamSho dropped, and flopped on the Xbox 360 years after the final 2D entry I was fairly certain we'd no longer see or hear from it again. Imagine my surprise earlier this week when I found out on Twitter that a PS2 port of "SamShoVI" was actually coming to the PS4. If for nothing else I personally wanted it for a trip down memory lane, and for what it's worth I think it provided exactly that.
