Thanks for this, wouldn't have seen it otherwise. Loved this series, it had great atmosphere and style, with gorgeous graphics and tight gameplay. A classic Neo-Geo title.
As a big fan of SF2, this was one of my favorite PvP 2D fighting games. Had advanced features like parries, missile deflection, crawling, and variable arena width (big playability issue, but the pixelization got pretty bad at wider angles).
Was amazed relatively noone knew about this gem at the time.
I don't think the first Samurai Shodown had parries. Pretty sure that was introduced in the sequel. But if you got unarmed, you could catch your opponent's weapon and throw them!