Samurai Shodown V Perfect

Samurai Shodown V Perfect, also known as Samurai Spirits Zero Special Full Version in Japan, is the enhanced sequel to Samurai Shodown V, and the 13th main installment in the Samurai Shodown series. It's the ninth entry in the official chronology, if counting non-canonical games. This exclusive title is part of the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection and was initially intended as the last Neo Geo game but was never officially released before.

Development
After work on 'Samurai Shodown V Special, Yuki Enterprise and director Kouji Takaya decided to begin development on a third and final update. Samurai Shodown V Perfect was meant to fix some of the gameplay issues still present in Special as well as introduce new stories for every character. SNK hadn't been told this game was being made, as they were already developing Samurai Shodown VI by this point. In fact, they found out when the game was in location test in one single location, so they immediately ordered V Perfect‘s cancellation. The game was pulled from location test so fast that the director Takaya didn't even have time to get to the site to watch people play before it was pulled.

Necrosoft Games director Brandon Sheffield and SNK employee Adam Laatz discovered a surviving copy of Samurai Shodown V Perfect while he was interviewing Kouji Takaya for the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection. According to SNK, this is the final official game made for the NeoGeo platform. The game was not yet localized properly at the time of the discovery, and it was thus reworked prior to its release in the collection.

The game saw a long-overdue arcade release with the exA-Arcadia platform. Additionally, the proper Overkill animations, both for attacker and victims were restored in the arcade version and such in-game gore can be enabled/disabled.

Storyline
Set in an alternative timeline by virtue of being a dream match, Kuroko seeks the strongest warriors to participate in a tournament that would be later revealed to be organized by Yoshitora himself. As the game was concurrently being developed along with Samurai Shodown VI, it is highly implied that the character stories in the game is a prelude to the events that would take place in the following aformentioned game.

Stages
All stages of Samurai Shodown V Special, with the Bridge stage serving as stage for Story Mode.

Trivia

 * Brandon Sheffield, Necrosoft Games' director reveal that Yuki Enterprise were planning to put Hazuki Kazama in the next game, Samurai Shodown VI, as fans keep asking her to be in. Knowing full-well she's not going to be in it as they're already finishing VI, it was a big bait and switch they were going to pull. This trick was revealed 15 years later.
 * Certain finishing overkill moves had to be simplified to accommodate the epilogues for each character, due to the limited memory of the platform. Like its predecessor, the game uses whole-width fonts in the dialogs.
 * Overkill moves were retained and not reduced to generic issen attacks (as what happened to the "censored version" of Samurai Shodown V Special) but they no longer dismember, maim or bisect enemies. Gaira's and Enja's was retained, Tam-Tam no longer causes the character's icon item to drop, Suija is no longer covered in blood, and Kusaregedo simply burps afterwards. Rimururu's, Nakoruru's and Yoshitora's were carried over as they did not involve mutilation.
 * Despite the name difference, the announcer will still say the previous title in English as Samurai Shodown V Special instead of Perfect. In the Japanese version, this did not matter as the upgraded title was named quite differently.