In contrast to other fighting games at the time, which were set in modern times and focused primarily on hand-to-hand combat, Samurai Shodown is set in feudal-era Japan (similar to Kaneko's Shogun Warriors which was released the year prior) and was SNK's first arcade fighting game to focus primarily on weapon-based combat.

The game uses music from the time period, with sounds of traditional Japanese instruments, such as the shakuhachi and shamisen.

Focusing more on quick, powerful strikes than combos, the slow motion was added to intensify the damage dealt from hard hits.

A delivery man occasionally appears in the background and throws items such as bombs or health-restoring chicken, which can change the outcome.

[4] Shiro Tokisada Amakusa, slain in Japan of 1638 by the forces of the Tokugawa Shogunate for his part in the Shimabara Rebellion, was resurrected in 1787 as an akuma from making a deal with the dark god Ambrosia by bringing the evil entity into the world by using the Palenke stone and its energy.

Driven by hatred for the Shogunate and having a nihilistic streak towards the world, he unleashes his dark powers to bring chaos to all of existence in 1788.

Samurai Shodown evolved from what was originally planned to be a traditional side-scrolling beat 'em up, featuring monsters as the dark heroes (similar to Data East's Night Slashers).

However, after considering what would sell to a global audience, series-creator and director Yasushi Adachi decided that a fighting game with distinctly Japanese characters, such as samurai and ninjas, would do better.

[5] The only hold-over from the original concept was Genan Shiranui, the hunchbacked claw-handed creature who was inspired by Adachi's fascination with Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands.

[5] The programming team for Samurai Shodown consisted of a combination of veteran SNK programmers and former Capcom employees.

[6] The idea to spell the English title "Shodown" rather than "Showdown" came from SNK's U.S. distributor: They felt the Japanese title "Samurai Spirits" did not adequately explain the game, and felt the spelling could be a play on the word shogun, based on the lingering popularity of the Shogun miniseries.

[5] The Neo Geo AES version of the game was released for the Wii Virtual Console on October 16, 2007, in Japan; May 30, 2008, in Europe; and June 16, 2008, in North America.

[8] As a result, it was decided to censor the game for most platforms by changing the blood from red to white and disabling the fatal attack animations.

[10] The 3DO version was first released in 1994 in North America, then in Japan and Europe the following year, with all blood and fatality graphics intact.

[citation needed] The censoring of the Neo Geo console version was unusual in that it was tied to the specific system.

[8] In addition to the Neo Geo system, the AES, Samurai Shodown was ported to multiple other platforms, including the Super NES, Game Boy, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, 3DO, FM Towns, PlayStation and PlayStation 2.

The Game Boy version includes all the characters, stages, and most of the special moves, but has no combos, fatalities, or voices.

[33] In North America, RePlay reported Samurai Shodown to be the most-popular arcade software kit for four months in 1993, from August[34][35] to October[36][37] and then again in December.

[20] Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the Super NES version a 37 out of 50, commenting that despite the lack of scaling, it is still a very good port.

[24] GamePro praised the general gameplay but criticized the quality of the conversion, complaining that the scaling is not as smooth as the arcade version, the animations are slower, the load times are interminably long, and the gameplay is crippled by a poor control configuration, which the player is not given the option to change.