SamSho has traditionally been mishandled in the west, arguably overall.
SS1 was ported everywhere with varying levels of success, but it broke through and was as popular as it deserved to be. SS2 was a great follow up, reviewed great and had good distribution, but SNK decided to try and capitalize on it as an exclusive to move hardware. I'm sure it worked somewhat in Japan, but in the US it relegated them to niche territory.
SNK keeping their games NeoGeo-only was an absolutely baffling decision. It must have been due to the Playstation and Saturn releases, but yeah...if they thought their NeoGeo CD would somehow be able to compete with them...lol. Just...lol. I mean, I loved having a Neo CDZ back in the day and had like 50+ games for it. But it was clearly a niche system.
Also to note, SNK tried some other genres with their IPs, but we never got those in English, either- Samurai Shodown and KOF both had RPGs. The Samurai RPG was pretty good- had very nice sprites, art, and music, and multiple playable characters/stories. You selected a main character and got other characters to join your party (except for Genjuro- he fights alone and can hit multiple enemies at once to make up for it), then went through the stories of either SS1 or SS2. The Neo CD version also had a little bonus extra mini story where you played as Shizumaru from SS3.
Even though it was only released like a year or so later, SS3 came (out at least here) with zero hype, and it made very little impact...reviews I remember being pretty middling. I actually liked SS3, but it was definitely a departure from 2 (believe it was a new team?). Total change of tone and was pretty janky/felt rushed.
Yeah- SNK had a thing around this time where the third game in every series would be very different from the previous versions. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I can't think of a single game that people thought was better than the previous one overall. Generally it took a follow-up to 'fix' things. See also- KOF '96, Fatal Fury 3, and Art Of Fighting 3 (which never got another game, but the same team made the infinitely better Last Blade 1+2 plus Garou MOTW).
They actually ported this one, the Saturn port was pretty good with the ram cart but the PS1 port was expectedly dire. SNK wasn't even going to bring it over, Sony did to bolster their library/get nerd cred. Issue was the target audience had already imported, same vicious cycle deal as all 2D ports in the US, which eventually stopped. On top of this this 3D fighters were at this point passe in the mainstream...I remember getting into an argument with someone that claimed Toshinden was superior.
The PS1 port was the biggest piece of shit at the time. Just a complete travesty of a release. KOF '95 PS1 wasn't that much better and of course these were the games that Sony released. They bombed, and we didn't get much else from SNK on the PS1 in 'Murica until a few years later. Most of their PS1 games never released outside of Japan IIRC, which sucks because some of their ports weren't bad for the time. Samurai Shodown IV was much better than III and despite missing frames, played smoothly. It even had Cham-Cham added in Vs. mode. And then Real Bout Special Dominated Mind was absolutely fantastic and was its own Fatal Fury entry- more than just a port. But nobody knew about it.
This reminds me that Sony had kind of an anti-2D sprite game stance for a while and we missed a lot of good games in English because of that dumb shit.
4 was fantastic IMO, but the series was dead in the US. I only saw a few places that had it, but generally on busted MVS cabs. This is kind of the point where arcades were dying and everyone was just playing at home anyway. I played the shit out of the import Saturn rev tho.
That was 1996- arcades still had a couple of good years left, at least where I am, they didn't start dying until around 2000. SS4 was in a couple of places near me and got a decent amount of play, but it was nowhere near SS1 or even SS2 levels.
The fact that we get at least one more good one makes me happy, and I am glad it's getting the attention that it is. I hope it goes on a few seasons.
More DLC characters would be awesome. I really hope this game picks up steam with Evo. Also hope the PC and especially the Switch ports turn out well.
A lot of people didn't care for Samurai Shodown 6, but I really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, no blood. Didn't care- it was awesome having pretty much the entire cast of SS1-5, plus a few new additions, in one game. Can't think of too many other fighting games where you can fight in front of the white house. Maybe Martial Champion? LOL.
When I finally got to play VI it felt too much like mugen or something.
All those Atomiswave Capcom and SNK games felt like that back then!