A Hip-Hop Breakdancing Samurai!? It Could Only Happen in One Game – Samurai Champloo

by Louis Bedigian

 

“If you think you've mastered the game with Mugen, play it with Jin and it's like a totally different game.”

 

 

Timmy was so proud as he approached his best friend, Scotty. He came riding in on a new BMX bike, but all Scotty could focus on was the strange purple bottle Timmy was holding.

 

“Hey Scotty, like my new bike?”

 

“Sure. What in the world are you holding?”

 

“Oh, this? It’s a bottle of shampoo.”

 

“Uhh…may I ask why you are holding that?”

 

“It’s very special. It’s not like other shampoos.”

 

“What, you mean it’s like a conditioner or something?”

 

“No silly. It’s a special shampoo made by samurais.”

 

“You mean the purple bottle you hold in your hand is real samurai shampoo?”

 

“That’s correct.”

 

“Incredible! Let’s go take a shower right now!”

 

Timmy’s stunned. “Well, I don’t exactly do that sort of—“

 

“I mean separately! Come on, let’s use the hose. We’ll be samurai warriors in no time!”

 

Legend has it that when the shampoo was washed away from children’s scalps, it dug deep into the soil and became part of our world. Years later the soil was used for farming – primarily tomatoes. Those tomatoes were used to make ketchup, which made its way to a local Heinz factory. Little did anyone know that on one fateful day a few important game developers would eat those tomatoes and become infused with the power of the samurai. This was not samurai shampoo, however, it was ketchup. Though not as potent in its new form, the ketchup had enough of the shampoo’s original essence to inspire greatness. Thus, a new game was born: Samurai Champloo. 

 

 

 

Coming to PlayStation 2 early next year, Samurai Champloo takes everything you love about the show and combines with several new elements for a game that’s cool, unusual, and downright unexpected (it has Gangster Monkeys!).

 

Yoshinobu “Nobi” Matsuo, co-producer at Bandai Games, told us what to expect. "It's a generalized hack-n-slash with an interesting twist and a mixture of music and sword play,” he says. “It's a heavily combo-based system."

 

Nobi explained that the story, which is considered a lost episode, takes a sidestep from the main journey, leaving the main characters stranded in Hokkaido. “That's where this story takes place. Then they get involved in all the local troubles over there. You can play as both Mugen and Jin in the game. You progress through the story with whichever character you see. So you progress through the same storyline from different perspectives of the characters."

 

He continues: "There's a new character that the creators (Grasshopper, the people that did Killer7) added to the storyline. He plays an integral part in getting Mugen and Jin into the local activities in Hokkaido. Once you've beaten the game, you get to unlock him and see the story through his perspective." 

 

 

 

Combative Advantage

 

Nobi says that one of the most interesting things about the game is that each character plays differently. "It's a very combo-based combat system where you make a bunch of attacks. As you look at some of the screenshots you'll see at the top center of the screen a little combo tree.

 

"Anybody can jump into the game, you don't have to memorize combos at length. The combos are displayed on the combo tree up at the center of the screen. Some of them you'll notice branch because they'll have a heavy attack which is the triangle button, or a light attack with the square button. You start all the way at the left moving to the right, and you can do the branch accordingly with the triangles.

 

"It's not like Dance Dance Revolution where you do the beat or anything, but they wanted to integrate some of the music aspect. The game is composed of a bunch of different combo trees that branch accordingly. What you want to do is collect LPs. The more LPs you collect the more combo trees you get. You get an entirely different combo tree depending on what LP you play. The background music will change and your combo tree will as well. The interesting thing about that aspect is that when you get to a certain point when you're playing the combo tree can fluctuate on its own even within the same LP.

 

"You're going to have eight or so LP records to collect. You can only carry two at a time. The reason for that is that each combo tree caters to different circumstances. [As the player] you have to decide which LP works best for each situation." 

 

 

 

A Time For Slashing

 

"It's completely hack-n-slash, but there are multiple layers to it. If you look at the screenshots you'll see that certain backgrounds will change. You'll go from combat and you'll move into a transition stage, and you'll see transition and two, and then you go into Tate, which is Tate one or six, and then there's a mode called Trance, one through five.

 

"Those are special modes you can jump into to get additional rewards. Instead of monotonously going through the hack-n-slash -- when you hack-n-slash there's a little tension meter on the left hand corner. When you build that up an enemy will pop up with a star over his head. Attack him and you'll initiate combat and go into another stage of combat called Tate mode.

 

"Tate mode is where you try to pound the hell out of the controller to get as many combo hits as possible. Depending on the combo points you've accumulated in regular combat, the time you spend in Tate mode gets extended. The longer you stay in Tate mode the more combos you can get in. And the more combos you get in Tate mode the longer you can stay in the next mode, Trance.

 

"Trance mode is essentially...if you're a gamer you should know what it is, it's like a survival mode. Throughout the entire background music you have to survive a huge onslaught of enemies coming one after the other. It's in that stylized silhouette [visual effect] and has different phases, Japanese fighting doors. When you finish that you'll end up with a treasure chest at the end of the last fighting door. That's how you get LP records that you can't buy, or additional weapons." 

 

 

 

Gimme Some Answers!

 

Samurai Champloo is very musical – is this original music composed for the game, is it from the show, or is it a mixture of the two?

 

Nobi: A mixture. Some from the show, but the majority is original music composed (by Grasshopper) for the game.

 

Is the music interactive at all?

 

Nobi: The music isn't interactive. As I said it's not like Dance Dance Revolution where you have to do an interactive beat, it's just a flavor. It's linked with the combo tree – if you change the music it changes the combo tree. You don't have to interact with it.

 

Can you give us an idea of how many different songs there will end up being?

 

Nobi: It's open for consideration. Each character will end up having seven or eight, if not more. Some may have more, some may have less, it depends on the character.

 

Are there worlds or stages in this game? Are there individual missions? How are things spread out?

 

Nobi: It's a linear world, but it's not like Ghosts 'N' Goblins where you have to get from point A to point B. There's a central location that you work out of. They have a blacksmith there, a record shop, they have mini-games there, and you work out of there. The scenario moves along, and exit points take you to the next scenario. I don't know if that answers your question, does it?

 

I think so, but you mentioned Ghosts 'N' Goblins...

 

Nobi: [Laughs] That's a game I consider to be linear. Samurai Champloo isn't like that. There are intermission points where you can stop and do your own thing, whatever you want. 

 

 

 

There's Gangster Monkeys.

 

Nobi: Uh-huh. [Laughs]

 

Has rap music carried over to any of the other characters? Are there Hip-Hop Giraffes?

 

Nobi: [Everyone laughing] No, it only goes as far as the monkeys. I was pretty shocked when I saw the scenario too, but it only goes as far as them. The rest are pretty much human assassins. They just threw in the monkeys out of nowhere. [Laughs]

 

What can you tell us about the other characters in the game? The way they fight, the way they attack, their different styles, etc.

 

Nobi: Each of the enemies are like ninjas/assassins. There's actually a witch in the game, and you deal with all these special properties and enemies. The only animals you're going to be fighting are the monkeys. There are about five or six different bosses that you'll be fighting, and each of them has their own unique abilities.

 

But the core of the game are the three different characters you get to select from. The thing that really drew me to this game and made me say "Wow!" were Mugen, Jin, and the hidden character, who are [entirely different from each other]. It's like playing an entirely different combat system. The combo trees are different and their fighting styles are different. Mugen is more of a breakdance freestyle, so he's got a lot of fast combo attacks. Jin is more traditional samurai combat. He does a lot of Yojutsu. You basically sheathe the sword again and strike from drawing the sword. A lot of his combos revolve around that. If you have the sword drawn it's easy to do combos. But if you go through a certain sequence he'll actually put the sword back in, which places him in a different combo tree, and then he can pull out different combos based on his Yojutsu. He plays very differently from Mugen. So if you think you've mastered the game with Mugen, play it with Jin and it's like a totally different game.

 

The third character has a totally different style that you're going to have to figure out yourself.

 

 

Thanks to everyone at Bandai Games and Kohnke Communications for having a wonderful conference call.