Samurai Champloo
Hack and slash through feudal Japan? Um, yes please.
Published: December 12, 2005
Regardless of whether or not you're a superfan of anime, Cowboy Bebop is at least a vaguely familiar name. Thanks to heavy exposure on Adult Swim (or [adult swim] if you'd prefer), Shinichiro Watanabe's cowboys in space series and movie managed to cut through the noise of giant robots and bloody megabattles with charged-up fireballs that most pigeonhole anime as with a quiet reliance on well-rounded characters just trying to make it as bounty hunters.
For better or worse, Watanabe's name is intrinsically tied to the series, so when the focus for his next project shifted to feudal Japan and brought music to the fore - this time trading Yoko Kanno's freeform jazz for hip-hop, Samurai Champloo didn't really need any extra publicity. It touched on territory most tend to find interesting from the outset, and helped propel the tale of two men helping a young girl track down a samurai who smells of sunflowers into greater appeal than one would expect for the subject matter.
It helps that once again the characters are as important to the story as the setting; Mugen is an impulsive loudmouth with a penchant for working breakdancing moves into his sword play, while Jin is a quiet, reserved Bushido-abiding samurai, and both end up balancing out the protective custody of the cutesy teahouse server Fuu with wildly different styles.
This is key to Samurai Champloo game, because the differing personalities of the two samurai are the crux of what makes the combat sound so intriguing. We recently had a chance to get more info on exactly what kind of combat the game will offer, and it latches onto the core influences of the TV series far, far more than most licensed games would.
Bandai wants you to think of SC the game as a "lost" episode. It's the easiest way to explain away why Mugen, Jin and Fuu find themselves traipsing about the mountainous northern Japanese region of Ezo, and why they'll be hacking and slashing their way through what will eventually become Hokkaido today with an as-yet unannounced third playable character.
The hacking and slashing is the game, though, or at least the bulk of the gameplay, and as such it's treated with the same kind of musical focus that the series enjoys. Each character's moves are broken down into combo trees woven through a particular hip-hop LP. Up to eight different LPs can be juggled per character, but only two of them equipped at any given time. This effectively lets you tailor your move sets according to the situation, and with it mix in specific types of music for quick flurries of weak attacks or stronger sets of more powerful ones.
It's an interesting approach to things, and hopefully will provide a basic feeling of customization as you freely roam the levels cutting down anyone stupid enough to challenge you. Bandai was quick to point out that the personalities are reflected in each character's fighting style, and the combo tree inputs are sculpted around this, so you'll see much more of a freeform, loose set of attacks while using Mugen and a more classic samurai one-cut-one-kill batch of swordplay from Jin.
Slice through enough enemies and you'll build tension to the point of kicking on the game's Tate Mode. The view shifts to a stylized, silhouetted presentation with a series of Japanese screens. They slide open one at a time as opponents are felled in a series of one-on-one duels that require a different set of combos from the normal main trees. Survive here for long enough without taking hits and the game launches into Trance Mode where dozens of enemies will rush your character at once. The window to move from Tate to Trance is offered via a very short prompt to press a particular face button, and the game segues instantly from there into a complete button mash-fest.
Survive that and you'll net yourself a reward like a new weapon (there a good 60 of them to choose from) or special item. Since the game can be played through from each of the three combatants' perspectives, and with each of them providing a different set of moves, music and pacing, there seems to be far more to digest here than you'd get in a standard brawler.
Learning about the basic gameplay finally put the game our radar. You could see the way people's faces lit up as we discussed how that game was trying to fuse music and action, and if Bandai can pull the whole thing off, we could be looking at one of the most unique fighters the PS2 has ever seen. That's a lofty goal to be sure, but the developers' willingness to change or drop things that may not work at the suggestion of the US staff handling the localization shows they're at least willing to listen and things aren't quite locked down yet.
There's still plenty of time before the game sees release, and we're dying to get our hands on a build to see how the combat works, but until then, we'll have to make do with the steady stream of info and screens that are released. The screens we have gotten are a little cryptic, so if you peeked at those first without reading the description, have another look, and if you haven't yet seen them, hopefully we explained things enough that they'll make sense.
For better or worse, Watanabe's name is intrinsically tied to the series, so when the focus for his next project shifted to feudal Japan and brought music to the fore - this time trading Yoko Kanno's freeform jazz for hip-hop, Samurai Champloo didn't really need any extra publicity. It touched on territory most tend to find interesting from the outset, and helped propel the tale of two men helping a young girl track down a samurai who smells of sunflowers into greater appeal than one would expect for the subject matter.
It helps that once again the characters are as important to the story as the setting; Mugen is an impulsive loudmouth with a penchant for working breakdancing moves into his sword play, while Jin is a quiet, reserved Bushido-abiding samurai, and both end up balancing out the protective custody of the cutesy teahouse server Fuu with wildly different styles.
This is key to Samurai Champloo game, because the differing personalities of the two samurai are the crux of what makes the combat sound so intriguing. We recently had a chance to get more info on exactly what kind of combat the game will offer, and it latches onto the core influences of the TV series far, far more than most licensed games would.
Bandai wants you to think of SC the game as a "lost" episode. It's the easiest way to explain away why Mugen, Jin and Fuu find themselves traipsing about the mountainous northern Japanese region of Ezo, and why they'll be hacking and slashing their way through what will eventually become Hokkaido today with an as-yet unannounced third playable character.
The hacking and slashing is the game, though, or at least the bulk of the gameplay, and as such it's treated with the same kind of musical focus that the series enjoys. Each character's moves are broken down into combo trees woven through a particular hip-hop LP. Up to eight different LPs can be juggled per character, but only two of them equipped at any given time. This effectively lets you tailor your move sets according to the situation, and with it mix in specific types of music for quick flurries of weak attacks or stronger sets of more powerful ones.
It's an interesting approach to things, and hopefully will provide a basic feeling of customization as you freely roam the levels cutting down anyone stupid enough to challenge you. Bandai was quick to point out that the personalities are reflected in each character's fighting style, and the combo tree inputs are sculpted around this, so you'll see much more of a freeform, loose set of attacks while using Mugen and a more classic samurai one-cut-one-kill batch of swordplay from Jin.
Slice through enough enemies and you'll build tension to the point of kicking on the game's Tate Mode. The view shifts to a stylized, silhouetted presentation with a series of Japanese screens. They slide open one at a time as opponents are felled in a series of one-on-one duels that require a different set of combos from the normal main trees. Survive here for long enough without taking hits and the game launches into Trance Mode where dozens of enemies will rush your character at once. The window to move from Tate to Trance is offered via a very short prompt to press a particular face button, and the game segues instantly from there into a complete button mash-fest.
Survive that and you'll net yourself a reward like a new weapon (there a good 60 of them to choose from) or special item. Since the game can be played through from each of the three combatants' perspectives, and with each of them providing a different set of moves, music and pacing, there seems to be far more to digest here than you'd get in a standard brawler.
Learning about the basic gameplay finally put the game our radar. You could see the way people's faces lit up as we discussed how that game was trying to fuse music and action, and if Bandai can pull the whole thing off, we could be looking at one of the most unique fighters the PS2 has ever seen. That's a lofty goal to be sure, but the developers' willingness to change or drop things that may not work at the suggestion of the US staff handling the localization shows they're at least willing to listen and things aren't quite locked down yet.
There's still plenty of time before the game sees release, and we're dying to get our hands on a build to see how the combat works, but until then, we'll have to make do with the steady stream of info and screens that are released. The screens we have gotten are a little cryptic, so if you peeked at those first without reading the description, have another look, and if you haven't yet seen them, hopefully we explained things enough that they'll make sense.
