First Samurai, alternatively titled The First Samurai, is a 1991 beat 'em up platform game developed by Vivid Image and published by Image Works. The First Samurai was originally released in September 1991 for the Amiga and Atari ST, and was later ported to the Commodore 64, MS-DOS and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was followed by a sequel, Second Samurai, in 1994. In 2011 a port was released for iOS.
Plot
In The First Samurai, the protagonist undertakes a quest as the first samurai in the history of feudal Japan, and must compete against rival swordsmen.
Gameplay
Eating food and drinking sake will help the player get stronger, while fire and enemy contact will weaken the samurai. The main objective in a level is to collect a set of four items which must be used to get access to the area with the end of level boss. Magic pots serve as checkpoints and are activated with the energy of the player's sword. Killing a monster releases a portion of sword energy which the player then collects automatically. Using a bell at the right place removes an obstacle blocking the player's path. The player starts out as a hermit in an ancient forest, but he eventually becomes powerful enough to fight in the villages and towns, and eventually the dungeons.
Development
The First Samurai began development in July 1990, and was originally scheduled for a September 1991 release for Amiga and Atari ST, with an MS-DOS port stated to be 'unplanned' at the time. In a December 1990 issue of British gaming magazine The One, The One interviewed team members from Vivid Image for information regarding The First Samurai's development in a pre-release interview. The First Samurai's samurai theme was first conceived by graphic artist Paul 'Dokk' Docherty as a 'random thought' while watching the 1954 monster film Them!, and Docherty expresses that "At the time we were in the middle of designing another game but we weren't very happy with it." The One purported that the title The First Samurai's correlation to The Last Ninja is "purely coincidental". Docherty's proposal of a samurai theme was received by Vivid Image as "exactly what they were looking for", and Docherty states that "We wanted something fairly mystical so that we could put in lots of special effects. Samurai also have a very strong sense of honour - that fitted in with our plot." Mev Dinc, The First Samurai's project manager, expressed that programmer Raffaele Cecco was invited to the project "because he's not only a very good programmer, he also comes up with lots of really good ideas. If I suggest one thing, he usually comes back with three." The First Samurai's development was described by The One as "an ongoing creative process in which everyone is encouraged to participate", and Dinc expressed that "Deciding on sprites and backgrounds that everybody is happy with can be time-consuming. We don't argue, we just have constructive discussions."
User-friendly controls were a priority in the game's development, and John Twiddy, The First Samurai's map editor, stated that "You have to be able to pick up the joystick and just play the game." The balance between easy-to-learn controls and allowing the player an array of different attacks was an important factor in The First Samurai's design, and Twiddy stated that "The main thing is to get lots of manoeuvres in there. They're all effective so ultimately you don't actually need to know how you've done each one." The animations in response to the player's inputs were partially inspired by arcade games, and Twiddy states that ”In some arcade games, when your opponent's in a certain position you end up grabbing them and throwing them over your shoulder. It looks like you're doing something spectacular but in fact it's the computer showing standard joystick moves in different ways on screen. That's a feature we'd like to include." The First Samurai was the first 16-bit game that Raffaele Cecco worked on, and he spent the first two months on the project learning how to program for the Amiga, stating that "Obviously I couldn't use any old sprite handling or scrolling routines because I didn't have any. I've had to start everything from scratch." The First Samurai was programmed on a 386 PC using the Programmer's Development System (PDS) developed by Fruad Katon. Vivid Image deliberately chose a "fairly long" development period according to The One, and Cecco expressed that "We want to make certain there's plenty of time at the end for tweaking. This is the sort of game where it all comes down to how many enemies there are and where they're positioned."