Retrospective: Bushido Blade
There should be blood.
For those who realised what was going on, the 1997 release of Bushido Blade was a scary time. This was a fork in the road for fighting games. This title was taking a stand against everything we knew, and with luck it could have torn a rift in the entire genre. We watched Bushido Blade leap forward, beginning its attack. A bird took flight from a tree. The breeze stilled as we held our breath. All was silence.
Over the next year we watched Bushido Blade fail to muster the attention it should have - we saw the game drop its sword, fall to its knees, and cough out a crap sequel. That was that. All of Bushido Blade's training and secret techniques would be lost forever to the games industry.
And that hurt. Lord, it still hurts to this day. Every Tekken and Virtua Fighter brings a little soul-sting of what could have been. If one of your flatmates comes home to see you playing the new Soul Calibur and you notice the faintest hint of a tear forming in his eye, you know you're looking at a Bushido Blade fan.
Let me tell you what could have been.

If a tree falls in the forest and you're fighting desperately to keep your guts inside your belly, does anybody realise how awesome it is?
Bushido Blade was a 'realistic' 3D weapon-based fighting game for the PSX with no health bars, and it's an idea realised with such confidence and ability that even today it's almost impossible to play Bushido Blade with a friend and not wonder how on earth health bars and combos became ubiquitous in fighting games and beat-'em-ups. Again, going back to Bushido Blade today what's also confusing is how developer LightWeight Co. managed to produce this and then follow it with as many as nine individual pieces of trash.
Bushido Blade works like this: If somebody scores a glancing blow on you, you're slowed. If somebody hits your arm, you fight on one-handed. If somebody hits your leg, you go down to one knee. If somebody hits you hard, anywhere at all, there is a horrible crunch or spurt of blood and you die.
You know, as if someone hits you very hard with a deadly weapon or something
So, you know how tense a fighting game gets when both of you only have a scrap of health left? That's Bushido Blade all the time!

You know you can kowtow in Bushido Blade? You assume the position and let your opponent end you. It's a like picking Dan in SF, except morbid.
And yeah, it's possible for any match to be over in three seconds, but that's less common and funnier than you'd expect. The characters in the game act with a distinctly human speed, and while most fighting games tend to funnel their complexity into aggression, Bushido Blade's depth all lies in dodging, staggering and blocking. This produces a game that's as much about waiting and cunning as it is about attacking, where knowing when to counterattack is as much about getting inside your opponent's head as reading his animations.
Advocates of more traditional fighting games might claim that's true of their chosen series, but it's just not. Those games all bear the millstone of being built for an arcade machine first and a home console second, and so they need to provide an instant thrill that lasts for at least 90 seconds. When a round of Bushido Blade starts the instinctive response is not to start spazzing about like a child riding the sugar high of a lifetime and go pummel your money's worth out of your opponent. The instinctive response from your very first match is to watch, and wait. Change your stance. Shuffle forward.
Your opponent drops down, maybe into a run, and you leap backwards. But it wasn't a run, and he was just psyching you out. So you send a taunt his way, then prove you're not scared by making your character sit his ass down on the ground.
Fundamentally, Bushido Blade was a fighting game which tried to remember why fighting was awesome in the first place. Instead of abstracting it with weirdly boring features like super-combos, or air juggling, or special abilities, or cancelling, Bushido Blade chose to simulate what was already beautiful about fighting. Unbearable tension. Moments of stillness, to exaggerate moments of action. Making a mockery of death by blocking a killing blow, and another, and another. Trying to lock your opponent into the weakness of his chosen weapon. The dilemma of whether to fight dirty, and throw handfuls of sand at your opponent. The chance to mess with the other guy, the chance to keep your cool, and the chance to run away.
God, that's another thing. Even the big arena fighting game of this generation, Ultimate Ninja Storm, doesn't come close to matching Bushido Blade's levels. These were huge areas where being backed up against a wall or knocked down a tier was just the start. In any match you were free to enforce a change of scene by running off into a nearby forest, say, where each missed sword-swipe would send enormous poles of bamboo tumbling to the ground. It was what kept those rare, epic five-minute duels interesting.

I wonder how much memory all the combined file sizes of all the panty textures that have ever appeared in a Japanese videogame would take up.
I remember one match where my friend and I traded cautious blows in six or seven different locales across three loading zones, until we ended up at the top of a ridge. It was there that we each went for a heavy attack and bounced off one another's weapons, sending us both tumbling off the ledge and into the mud fifteen feet below.
But neither of us stood back up. We just lay there, faces down. We waited for three seconds. Five seconds. We were so close our legs were touching. 10 seconds, with no movement, and no button presses. An eternity. I couldn't stand it anymore. In a heartbeat and in one movement my character scrambled to his feet and swung his hammer back down towards my opponent's prostrate form. In that instant the other man darted up towards me in an even quicker motion, and dug his sword into my chest. I watched the blood erupt from my muddied, broken character as he went stumbling backwards into the mud, his hammer falling harmlessly to one side.
Pretty sure it's one of the single coolest things I've ever seen a videogame do.

The naginta! The jerk's unfair, unbalanced weapon of choice. See also the rapier, the short sword, or anything you get killed with which is not the weapon you're currently using. You know the drill.
I bet they're having fun in the detestable alternate universe where Bushido Blade took off. I bet they're playing all kinds of fighting games with no health bars, which manage to look cool without the benefit of special moves choked with ethereal pyrotechnics or astonishingly detailed sprites. I bet they have at least a couple of fighting games each generation which make sense.
In closing, let me point out that I love Street Fighter IV as much as the next man. Which is to say I love it enough to decide to get good at it, find out that performing the cancels on a d-pad is like closing a hardback book on your testicles, look into buying an arcade stick, find out they're kind of expensive, and give up.
I guess I love Bushido Blade a little bit more than the next man. But you know what? I'm really okay with that. This game deserves a little bit more than what it got.









Comments (76) Latest comment 2 years ago
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Not if that next man is me.
I remember distinctly the elation of winning a match against the odds, hobbling around on a busted leg waiting for the unlikely chance to strike back.
I also remember the disappointment of finding out that Way of the Samurai was nothing at all like Bushido Blade when I had secretly hoped it was just a free-roaming version with more of a plot. How awesome would that have been?
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:*(
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I also remember me and a mate with 2 tv's back to back with 2 ps1's and a link cable, anybody try that? you played the game in in first person, it was something else. We spent all weekend playing it.
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The caption on the last screenshot wins.
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Bought this on a whim and it ended up devouring whole afternoons when friends came round. This and games like Carnage Heart (gotta have a retrospective on that one EG) made the PS1 for me. Pity very few genuinely original ideas made the cut to the next gen.
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You did forget to mention one awesome option; hitting 'Select' at any time allowed you to honourably surrender and allow your opponent to strike you down. However, more often than not, when I did this my brother would then proceed to kill me then continue to hack into my corpse until I hit continue.
There was also a hilarious bug when using the broadsword where if you positioned yourself correctly above your fallen opponent before your victory pose, the sword would make contact with the corpse and cause a constant fountain of blood to erupt. To my brother and I, this was the ultimate humiliation.
If this came out on XBLA, I would buy it in a flash. Just imagine online Bushido Blade!
EDIT: Oops, I see you did mention the surrender thing. My apologies... I was just so excited at seeing Bushido Blade again!
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Imagine the first person mode IN 3D USING NATAL!!!
(@_@)!!
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It really is the only beat 'em up I've played that really felt like it was all about skill and not some kind of controlled button mashage. Calmly deflecting my friends' mad hacks and slashes before delivering that single, precise, perfect death blow is a singular gaming experience that I will never forget.
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I even unlocked the gun dude who loves trips to the "Cinema" so much that he says it ALL THE GOD DAMN TIME!
Seriously though, I have fond memories of this game, I remember discovering for the first time how open the game really was when I 'accidently' was forced into the following screen, amazing. Getting mody, certain parts of your body completly altering your movelist should a certain part of the body become incapacitated...Being so close to death that you could press the select button to 'Give up'....your character would sit there to die honorably, and even say something tear jerking and then...SLASH lol tricked ya xD
Characters even had unique moves with certain weapons they had a high affinity too...mechanics truly ahead of its time that, as stated earlier, really need to be explored again!
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Despite being a huge Tekken fan, I can't recall a single moment that was as tense or exciting to me as Bushido Blade. I'm also surprised and disappointed that not a single fighting game since has adopted the concept. Brilliant game that was ahead of its time.
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Failure! My character commited suicide in shame, so I lost (which I kinda knew would happen, but had to try it regardless), but the fact that the game let me do it is one of the reasons I love it so much.
A game presenting the ultimate bad guy as completely defenceless, except for the notion of honour is top notch. If I played it again today I'd probably kill the bugger before he was ready again just to relive that moment.
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I never had it personally, but a mate of mine did - I always remember playing it at his and being amazed how you could cut down the trees. Stupid I know but...
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So hilariously true. I was one lured by the siren call of SF4, thinking I could "get into it" and learn the ridiculous combos and cancels because this one was user-friendly. Nope, not at all. Any mention of cancels or juggle combos is an instant turnoff because of the unreasonable difficulty curve in most every fighting game. Never played Bushido Blade, but it sounds revelatory.
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This would be be perfect for my PSP actually! Now if only there was a "store" to buy classic PS1 games....Oh yeah there is EBAY! \o/
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... wait. thinking about the kengo series... eh. you know what? just relive the original, that'll do, thank you.
*thinks of all the times he left himself open to a one hit kill. eh, if there ever was a game that really taught you, it was bb*
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+1 to TheRealBadaBing: This and Carnage Heart were 2 of my favourite ps1 games. Developers, are you listening? Remakes please, and soon!!
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I still have my copy too in amongst my numerous well-looked after PS1 games. Like others, I'm tempted to get it out again too.
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I used to play with Photek's 'Ni Ten Ichi Ryu' on repeat for a soundtrack.
Jon
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This is crying out for a remake, or at least a PSN release. I would buy it in a heart beat... Anyone know of a way to get it from Japanese PSN...? Hmm... maybe google will be my friend...
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Ah, to think of what could have been.
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Twat.
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The majority of others, based on the Street Fighter model have never hit it off with me. US and Japanese copies of Bushido Blade take pride of place amongst my collection of PS1 games.
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Duel fighter of the century.
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I think if the control system was that little bit more accessible, this really would have taken off in a big way.
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I wish my PS1 copy wasn't broken though...
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Way of the Exploding Fist is the first computer game I ever played, I love it to this day.
IK+ was also the balls.
Bushido Blade is a flat out masterpiece, one of the finest games ever created.
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Sadly there hasn't been anything close to it since (unless you count a one on one match in CoD4 with knifes only, that also has 1 hit kills :-D
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In closing, let me point out that I love Street Fighter IV as much as the next man. Which is to say I love it enough to decide to get good at it, find out that performing the cancels on a d-pad is like closing a hardback book on your testicles, look into buying an arcade stick, find out they're kind of expensive, and give up.
this is lame though... performing FADC's on a PS3 pad at least, is very doable, sounds like an excuse to me...
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"I rented this out for a night but never got the hang of it." - minus 2
I get negged twice for being brutally honest?
What's wrong with you people?
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"I rented this out for a night but never got the hang of it." - minus 2
I get negged twice for being brutally honest?
What's wrong with you people?
it's moronic really, it supposed to be a system for self moderation, but instead people seem to think it's a system for agreeing/disagreeing with comments...
imo EG needs to ditch it, the system blatantly isn't working, with intelligent, insightful comments often getting buried because a few morons disagree with/don't like the post...
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I thought I was the only man alive that remembered and loved this game. I will never forget the first time I played it, I thought to myself "this is how all fighting games should be like".
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those 3 sec kills were the ultimate 'fuck you!'
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'I never got the hang of this game' is not an intelligent or insightful comment.
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It really was good. I remember the single player being short though
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A reboot of the series would be effing fantastic. Same basic principles, but perhaps add story, free-roaming and stealth perhaps. Like a combo of this and Tenchu, thank you very much.
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This thread seems to be preaching to the converted though...
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My favourite memory of the game was running around the level like an idiot to confuse the opponent then BAM ninja style one strike and their body flops to the floor.
This game polished up for XBLA would be an instant buy for me.
Also someone talked about IK+ in the comments. That game needs to be remade badly, Xbox live, 4 player YES PLZ!!!!!!
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I was terrible at the single player game, I never got past the guy with the gun honorably, loved the 1v100 minigame, and had endless fun with 2 player mode, it seemed that the more you tried to do something skillful the more likely an amateur would get an instant kill, spent most of my time charging around the bamboo forest.