Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa's Revenge (Neo Geo)

Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa's Revenge
Also known as: Samurai Spirits: Amakusa Kourin (JP), Paewang Jeonseol: Legend of a Warrior (KR) Developer: SNK Publisher: SNK Platforms: Neo Geo, Arcade (Neo Geo) Released internationally: November 29, 1996 This game has regional differences.

The fourth entry in SNK's sword-slashing fighting game series. It removed the aerial blocking present in Samurai Shodown III as well as the ability to charge one's POW gauge, but added combination attacks initiated by pressing the C and D buttons, the ability to forfeit the round by committing suicide in exchange for starting the next round with a full POW gauge, and special finishing moves usable after defeating your opponent using specific attacks.

Console Differences

By default, the AES (console) version is set to the MVS (arcade) version's Violence Level 1, which recolors the blood effects from red to white, and disables suicide moves and finishing moves. However, the player can set the game to Violence Level 3, restoring these techniques and recoloring the blood back to red, by entering the Options screen, highlighting Exit, and pressing A+B+C+D. There is no sound to confirm this, so the only way to do so is to start the game and watch the blood effects during the How to Play sequence. This code does not work on the Korean cartridge (see Korean version).

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan	US	Korea

Korean version

Paewang Jeonseol: Legend of a Warrior, the Korean version, is based on the English mode, but is edited to remove all remaining instances of the Japanese language to comply with South Korean laws of the era that banned Japanese culture. As a result, the Language setting has been removed from both the Soft Dip menu and the AES mode's options screen (which originally included all four languages including Spanish and Portuguese). The Violence setting is also locked to Level 1 (white blood, no dismemberment, no suicide or finishing moves) and is removed from the Soft Dip menu to prevent the operator from changing it. The blood code described in Console Differences does not work in this version's AES mode. Finally, the character of Gaira Kafuin has been renamed to "Kim Ung Che" to add a Korean character to the cast.

The removal of Japanese from the game includes replacing any Japanese speech during an attack with a grunt, the complete omission of the announcer, and the deletion of all Japanese speech during victory poses without editing the animations (so characters move their mouths without talking). In addition, the original cartridge's attract mode opening sequence and bad ending contain cursive Japanese text that is never translated even in the English, Spanish or Portuguese modes. These were simply cut from the Korean version altogether, which causes the game to skip directly to the title screen after the Neo Geo logo sequence, and to always show the good ending in single-player mode no matter how much time it takes for the player to reach Amakusa's castle.

Paewang Jeonseol was produced as a separate cartridge from Samurai Shodown IV to make these changes, and this was done solely through modifying the program ROM and the S ROM (data for the static graphics layer). As such, the Japanese-language graphics and audio remain in the Korean version's data, but are unused. Both cartridges contain the names "Gaira" and "Kim Ung Che" in the S ROM data for the character names on the HUD, with "Kim Ung Che" going unused in the original version and "Gaira" in the Korean one. Curiously though, "Kim Ung Che" would be added to Samurai Shodown VI as a bonus character, in the form of "Rasetsu/Bust" style Gaira with his sprites and artwork edited to render him bald.