Mixed feeling hit me when I finish the Snes version of
‘First Samurai’ for the first time. I can’t pretend there isn’t an element of pride having
completed the game in 4 hours, on my first try. But mixed in with this are huge
amounts of disappointment (having spent £13.30 on a game I’ve finished in 4
hours on my first try) and an ample dollop of confusion. I remember a very
different game to this. A much longer, less frustrating, more enjoyable game. A game that wasn’t filled with weird alien enemies and had fantastic (although
now probably hilariously dated) title music. I remember the Amiga version of
this game, and to be honest I felt short changed.
Imagine the irony then when I looked at an old Amiga Power
review for the original. The always dependable Stuart Campbell is taking on
judgement duties for this particular title and he spends a third of his review heaping
praise on the care taken by programmer Raffaelle Cecco and the creative team at
Image Works. “I’m sick to death at some of the half arsed attempts at full
priced professional games certain software houses expect the public to fork out
for” he rages. “The over-riding theme seems to be far too often ‘oh well its
good enough’”. First Samurai is a game worth playing, he screams through his written
words. “From the opening sequence to the final battle, this game drips quality.
Beautiful graphics, huge levels, superb presentation, instinctive control,
magnificent sound and above all attention to detail”. The irony of course is
that the Snes version feels every bit a “half arsed attempt”. It’s not “good
enough” and it’s a game that in no way drips any sort of quality. ‘First Samurai’ on the Super Nintendo has
seemingly been hacked down from the glorious original by a fool who is as slow
and imprecise with his sword as the playable character of this game.
For me it’s Edge Magazine’s review rather
than Amiga Power’s that is a far more apt way of describing this console port.
It is “slow, boring and done in such a textbook fashion that you’d probably
have more fun reading the textbook”. In the two years it took to bring the
game to the Snes very little had been improved and much had been lost. Most
significantly the level count has evidently halved, explaining my short play
through time, and bosses have evolved into much easier equivalents.
I fully understand that the narrative (as flimsy as it is)
revolves around the First Samurai using his master’s spiritual sword to enact
revenge. Well at least I do because I’ve played the Amiga version; this
somewhat essential narrative element has been lost in the Super Nintendo
version due to the Nintendo appeasing censored introduction.
Clearly this sword
is of importance to our titular character, he certainly makes it clear when
playing by shouting “oh no my sword” every time it’s lost. It functions mainly
as a way of obviously killing heavily censored enemies in a bloodless way. Without
it you are force to use kicks and punches which limits you quite considerably
and forces you to have to get close to enemies that seem to be much more
efficient at close quarters combat. Taking damage lowers you health gauge, and
once that’s depleted you lose your sword until you hit enough enemies to get it
back. On paper it sounds a lot like Mario and his relationship with size
altering mushrooms. You have much more power and ability when you have the
sword, but take too much damage and you are crippled and must earn the superior
abilities again. However Mario was never prevented from competing levels when
‘Small Mario’, our Samurai is. You see the second function of this all too
easily lost blade is to open hidden level paths, by striking walls with it or
by hacking through floors and ceilings.
This is not achievable with your fists
or feet, so should you come across a section with a concealed entrance without
your sword your only option is to backtrack and start killing enemies till it
is returned. Monotonous beyond compare, this annoying frustration happens far
too often particularly in the last level, where 2 hits from a projectile firing
enemy means a loss of sword and with it a need for 5 minutes of grinding. Worse
still continue points are only activated by surrendering a portion of your sword
gauge, so at the times when you weakest you are unable to trigger them. The above
phrase ‘concealed entrance’ perhaps gave you the idea that levels are complex
intelligent mazes, filled with mysterious bonus filled areas and alternative
routes to the exit. They may well have been on the Amiga, but on the Snes each
stage has become essentially linear. The goal of everyone is to find 5 red
symbols, which always seem to be behind some sort of impassable trap (be it
fire, spikes or blue smoke). These are just imaginatively disguised doors, and
the key for each door is a bell hidden elsewhere in the level. ![]() |
"Oh No my Sword!" |
Collecting this bell and ringing it by the trap summons a wizard that neutralises the obstacle and allows you to get the red symbol needed to finish the level. This tragically is all that is left of a game that originally had Metroid-eque sprawling levels with complex yet accessible puzzle challenges. It’s odd, First Samurai was obviously a computer games that really wanted to be like a console game but now that it’s finally made it onto the SNES it plays so badly it fails to compare with similar games on the system.
Stuart Campbell recalls that for Amiga owners’ “the overall
feel created by the soundtrack is a glorious epic one and it gives the game an
atmosphere unlike any experienced”. For Snes owners glorious and epic, have to
be exchanged with repetitive and poorly digitized. In a game where you do a lot
of sword swishing (until the game takes this key mechanic away from you) the
last thing you want to hear is a player saying “he ya” every time you press a
button. Hearing ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’ whenever you collect treasure would be
great if it wasn’t horrible distorted and oddly truncated.
Oddly though in their review, the usually trust worthy Super
Play seem to think all these short comings in sound and level design equate to
a “subtly improved game” , “sprinkled with loads of nice little touches that
make it both lost or fun to play and really involving”. Indeed the only
critique they had was the one thing that it has carried over from the Amiga original;
its look and graphics.
“Had these been spruced up a bit we’d be looking at a
corker of gargantuan proportions here. No stunner to look at but underneath
it’s a finely tuned adventure slice-em up with weeks of playing potential”. Our
opinion differs, the graphics on the Snes version are fine – it’s everything
else that needs work.
Stuart Campbell closes his review by saying that the Amiga
game is “an object lesson to programmer’s everywhere in - yes – how to do it
properly” In that regard the Snes game is an object lesson in how to do things
quickly, heartlessly and carelessly. It reminds me of those games you see on
the App Store, ripping off successful original games in the hope that the
public will be duped into buying this game thinking it was the original one. It
may look the same (much to Super Play’s disgust) but it’s a shadow of its
former self.
Even judging the game on its own merits ignoring the
original, it’s hard to be too polite. Where the bulk of the brief experience is
going from screen to screen killing the repetitive enemies and hoping your
sword lasts long enough for you to actually use it to finish the level. If its a hack and slash it needs more variety
in the things to kill, and more ways to kill them. If it’s an exploration game
it needs to have some puzzles and if it’s to be considered value for money it
needs to last longer than a few hours.
It only seems appropriate to end with the wise words of
Stuart Cambell, who while praising the Amiga’s ‘First Samurai’ really does
encapsulate why I was so disappointed with the Snes’ ‘First Samurai’ which is
clearly a very different game. “Mediocrity has been an accepted standard for
too long – there’s no such thing as ‘good enough’ as far as I’m concerned –
either you have the pride and integrity to work at a game until it’s as near
perfect as it can feasibly be, or you’ve got no business expecting to sell a
copy”.
Where Did I get this
big load of half arsed disappointment from?
This game is another I bought impulsively on Ebay. Fuelled by
my affection for the original game, I bought this in rather nice boxed complete
condition for £13.30. I really wish I had researched the difference between the
version I remember and the version I now own, as if I had I would now feel less
disappointed and be 4 hours into another game.
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