Bushido Blade

Fighting has never been my thing, particularly unarmed. While always having an interest in it, I decided not to go pro with it. I could never really get behind the idea. But stabbing someone with a sword? Sure, sign me up.

It's hard to date this one. Let's say 1998, because I don't think I had heard of the game around the time of its release.

Bushido Blade is a very simple fighting game. The premise involves Japanese people killing each other with swords. That's about all I can remember now. Maybe something about a Sue clan and some Narukagemi or something. But yeah, swordfighting and it was cool. I was going through a phase of renting Wu-Tang movies from Blockbuster and so I was particularly into Japanese swordplay at the time.

When I first started throwing-down with my brother and my friends we were a little surprised that you could win in one move. This was, after all, a video game. What's more was that if you took a shot to the leg, you might get crippled. And instead of moving just left or right we had all the directions we could dream of running (8). What was this? Surely, this was no mere game. This was so much more. This was life.

Of course, it was still just a game and it's not really at all realistic, but it got me thinking of how much more realistic games could be, and were getting. Of course, no one really wants to play a game that is exactly like real life as an escape if it was real life. It got a lot of playtime because it was different from all the other fighting games that we played.

One lasting legacy of playing this game as much as I did with my brother and friends was our system of determining a victor. Since death is a mere slash away, we decided on a set number of wins necessary to walk away the victor: 20. Why 20? Because it took just long enough to feel right to give up the control if you lost.

And no, I don't keep the bushido. I know you already knew that, but that's something I wouldn't change if I had the chance either.