Samurai Showdown II XBLA XBOX360 Chances are youve never played Samurai Shodown II from the comforts of your home before. While arcades the world over housed a Samurai Shodown II kiosk somewhere on their floor, the Neo-Geo -- the console home for the series for some time -- sold about as well as Jennifer Lopezs last album. Luckily Xbox Live Arcade has its very own version of Samurai Shodown II and its as faithful an arcade translation as weve seen. There are three main changes to Samurai Shodown II from its arcade incarnation. First, there are now four difficulty settings: easy, normal, MVS (the arcade difficulty level), and hard. Easy still provides a good bit of challenge as you attempt to work your way through the list of twelve opponents that make up the arcade mode. Only the first fight is a real pushover; the rest youll have to earn by mastering some of the games moves. Its just too bad that none of the characters have their moves detailed in the typically helpful XBLA menus. Youll get a rundown of button functions, but its up to you to discover specific moves. Youll find character bios and story background, but no moves. Luckily, if the controller configuration doesnt suit your thumbs, you can easily remap any of the buttons. The next change comes with the visuals. First, theres no widescreen support, which isnt so much a change as it is a flat-out disappointment. As with most classic releases of this nature youre going to be stuck looking at a 4:3, windowed display. Inside that windowed display youll find the usual 2D sprites and environments with identical animations, camera movements and slow-motion effects. The one change is in the options menu where youll now find the option for "enhanced" graphics. Flicking that on simply removes some of the rough edges on the sprites and environments and has no effect on gameplay. Lastly, and this is probably the biggest of the changes, the Xbox Live Arcade version does house multiplayer on Xbox Live. You can link up with one other person (if you can find them) and battle it out, complete with a functioning lobby system so you arent booted out to the main menu after each fight. My bouts did feature some cumbersome lag, but it seemed to go in and out and could have been due to the quality of my opponents connection. The game does give you a ping counter so youll have some idea of what to expect. The rest of the core gameplay is exactly as you remember, which is to say its pretty damn good. All of the fighters are well-balanced and are totally unchanged from their arcade counterparts. The only real detractor is the Xbox 360s D-pad which is about as inaccurate as they come. Moves can be a real chore unless you have an expensive arcade stick. This is due in large part to the fact that the moves hinge on semi- and half-circles, something that the D-pad struggles with. If you can get by the frustrations of the 360s D-pad youll find a great fighter underneath. There are cool little touches like being able to break weapons, get into button-mashing weapon duels and use the POW meter to pull off some of the flashier moves in the game. Aesthetically, its what youd expect from a mid-90s release. There are pixelated sprites and environments that are identical to their original release. Surprisingly enough, the art style for both the characters and environments holds up very well 14 years removed. Likewise, the cheesy Japanese sounds, effects and dialogue text are just as ridiculous as ever.