Archive for
Samurai Shodown Hits Wii Virtual Console
The Wii Virtual Console is home to a few great fighting games, even if the Nintendo Wii itself is terribly lacking in that department. If you’re tired of playing Street Fighter II over and over again, head on over to your Wii and buy some SNK-flavored swordplay in the form of Samurai Shodown.
The version being offered through the Virtual Console is the one that was originally released on the Neo-Geo, so you won’t get the heavily pixelated graphics of the SNES take on the game. As you recall, Samurai Shodown — released in 1993 — was one of the first fighting games to equip its combatants with weapons. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as slashing down your enemies as a kabuki warrior or sending in a bird as a little Japanese girl. Samurai Shodown is definitely a step above Art of Fighting.
In the end, I think that we’d all agree when I saw Haohmaru FTW. He’s still one of my all-time favorites.
Samurai Shodown on the Wii Virtual Console will cost you 900 Wii Points.
Wii Virtual Console: Super Street Fighter II
Nintendo and Capcom are cashing in our love for all things Street Fighter again. When we first caught wiff of Street Fighter II for the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console, we got excited that we could experience the classic fighting game all over again. Then they told us about Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, getting us all ecstatic about speeding things up to hyper fighting proportions. And now they’re grabbing a few more dollars from us with Super Street Fighter II.
The version getting ported over to the Virtual Console is the one that was originally released for the SNES. In addition to the eight classic characters and four bosses, you get “introduced” to the new challengers: Deejay, Fei Long, Cammy, and T. Hawk. Nab it on the VC for 800 Wii Points.
Review: Art of Fighting on the Wii Virtual Console
The Wii Virtual Console is opening up the floodgates to some exceptionally excellent classic fighting games. We’ve seen the re-introduction of titles like Fatal Fury, but what about that SNK Street Fighter II clone that got everyone worked up? Art of Fighting, I found, was pretty lame when it hit arcades the first time around, mostly because it was such a blatant rip-off of what Capcom was doing with the Street Fighter franchise. Guess what? Re-introducing Art of Fighting to the world via the Wii Virtual Console doesn’t change much.
IGN had the opportunity to take the VC version of Art of Fighting out for a test drive and they were equally unimpressed with just about every aspect of the game. Characters? Hah!
Art of Fighting’s character roster leaves something to be desired, and especially so in single-player mode – there, you can only choose to be one of two different heroes. Fatal Fury was the same way, restricting the selection so the story would continue to make sense, but it’s not much of a selection process when your decision of who to use could be made by flipping a coin.
The rest of the picture doesn’t get much better. They say that it is “lacking any depth in its fighting engine.” The vocalizations for the fighters are “weak” and gameplay is “very bland and basic”, despite the introduction of taunting and a spirit meter. The only positive is the elimination of invisible walls in Art of Fighting, favoring a new “zooming, scaling effect that was very impressive for its time.” In the end, they give Art of Fighting on the Virtual Console a paltry score of 4.5 out of 10.
So, yeah, save your money for something else. Like Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting. Check out the full review here.
