SNK’s Samurai Showdown returns – Samurai Spirits coming in 2019

A classic fighting games series that’s been dormant for a while now, Samurai Showdown is coming back. Samurai Spirits is official, and looks pretty fantastic.

Spirited showdown

You might be a little confused about the name thing happening here, if you’re not a long time fan of Samurai Showdown. It’s pretty simple though, and basically shakes out to SNK unifying the game’s name globally.

The company’s sword-swinging fighting game series has always been called Samurai Spirits in Japan. It was only in english-speaking countries that it was re-named Showdown (for some reason). So this rebirth for the series is correcting that, and going with the Spirits moniker everywhere. Unfortunately too, that’s about all we know about the game this morning.

SNK hasn’t released any details as of yet on Samurai Spirits, only saying “Stay tuned for more”. Again though, the game is looking spectacular from this first look. We can see here that the action will be cast in the classic 2D style, but the animation and characters themselves will be massively boosted from any other Samurai title.

I’ve been a fan of these games since they first debuted in the arcades back in 1993, and I played the SNES version of the original to death. So basically, any time you want to announce a release date SNK I’ll be happy to hear it.

*Note – The header image is an older pic, from the release of the Anthology a few years ago. It has nothing to do with Samurai Spirits.