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This Week on XBLA: Samurai Shodown II, Some Other Stuff

SNK's terrific 2D fighter hits Xbox Live Arcade this week. Also? Bowling and J-Chess!

Ukyo is a chump.
Ukyo is a chump.
With the number of announced-yet-unreleased games that are all supposedly "coming soon" for Xbox Live Arcade, it makes sense that the company has transitioned from a Summer of quality to a Fall of quantity. So this week again sees us facing a trio of new releases. But unlike last week's load, this week's batch includes one of the greatest games ever made.

Yes, Samurai Shodown II is finally coming out. This is something that has me both "pumped" and "stoked." In case you're not a billion years old, Samurai Shodown II is a terrific 2D fighting game that was originally released for the Neo Geo by SNK. I have spent hundreds of hours either playing this game or watching it be played by others. That said, I'm not amazing at it. My Haohmaru is usually pretty good, though. This'll be 400 points and will have online play. I assume it'll be roughly identical to the setup that was used for Fatal Fury Special on XBLA, and that seemed to work fine.

The other two games are Rocketbowl and Shotest Shogi. I could probably go the rest of my life without playing another bowling game, but Rocketbowl changes things up by having you bounce your rocket-powered ball off of walls and stuff to hit pins. Could be interesting Shotest Shogi is a shogi game. Dude, wow. This game came out in Japan a little while ago, and I took that to mean that it wouldn't be getting a domestic release. Shogi, in case you didn't know, is a Japanese chess variant. Each of these games will be 800 points.
Jeff Gerstmann on Google+