![]()
DETAILED DESCRIPTION:
In one of the most controversial endings to a consoles lifespan, SNK released several
different revisions of their "FINAL" neogeo game to a thoroughly confused and relatively
disenchanted fan base. What began simply enough as a 5th sequel to their popular Samurai
Showdown fighting game franchise, ended with a pseudo 6th chapter which itself had 3
different revisions. Now in order to understand each and every step of exactly what
happened, it becomes neccessary to explain the process in order.
We begin in December of 2003 with SNK's official release of NGM-270, Samurai Showdown 5.
This was, simply put, chapter 5 in the Samurai Spirits/Showdown series. The next release,
also in 2003, was NGM-271, The King of Fighter's 2003. And then, with what was aggresively
advertised, heavily hyped, and purposely promoted as the FINAL neogeo game, in July 2004,
SNK released NGM-272, Samurai Showdown 5 "SPECIAL EDITION".
The first controversy came when players discovered that just before the release of the
game, and due to a bloody violent killing incident in a Japan school, SNK had censored
and toned down the games blood and violence; which was a trademark of the franchise.
This upset the fanbase and the outcry was enough to cause SNK to actually recall the
unsold cartridges to revert them back. This indirectly resulted in there being 2 different
revisions of the same game. The "original" version and the "fixed" version.
The second controversy would come a few months later in October of 2004 when it was
discovered that Yuki Enterprises had made some additional changes and improvements to
the game and was literally location testing the game, unbeknownst to SNK. When SNK
found this out, they immediately shut down the location test and forbid the games
release. This was partly due to them having already moved onto the Sammy Atomiswave
platform with work having already begun on a Samurai Showdown 6 title.
This final NEOGEO game was never given a real neogeo product number, but because it
could have been the true final neogeo game, the fans chose to assign it NGM-273.
For many years following this scandal, the game was simply never seen again nor
was even believed to have survived. However in 2020, while working on a compilation
samurai showodown game for modern game systems, the game was unearthed and included
as a bonus. Shortly after the games release, the SNK fans then extrapolated the
original neogeo rom data from the game in order to make possible the ability to
build fully functional stand alone physical game cartridges for use on actual original
neogeo hardware. Of course, all completely home made and unofficial.
INFORMATION TIMELINE:
-- December 2003 -- SNK releases Samurai Showdown 5. (NGM-270)
-- July 2004 -- SNK releases Samurai Showdown 5 Special Edition. (NGM-272)
-- October 2004 -- Samurai Showdown 5 Special Final Perfect Edition is location tested.
-- June 2020 -- Samurai Showdown NeoGeo Collection is released for PS4, Xbox1, Switch, PC.
-- July 2020 -- bootleg NEOGEO cartridges begin to surface on the internet.
CURRENT STATUS: RELEASED
|
