Samurai Shodown Rollback Test Set for Mid-February

SNK Global officially set a schedule for its upcoming test o rollback netcode implementation in Samurai Shodown. A new announcement posted to the company’s official Twitter account announced that the Samurai Shodown Rollback Beta test will take place on February 10, 2023. It will run for a week, and conclude on February 17, 2023. The exact time will be announced closer to the kickoff date. All announced time zones are in Japan time (GMT+9). The beta test is exclusive to PC via Steam, but the implementation is planned for the PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One versions of the game, as well. No rollback implementation has been announced for the existing Nintendo Switch edition.

SNK Global also announced that the test is open to all players that own a PC copy of Samurai Shodown. The test will involve the full game roster, including DLC characters. Players that don’t own those characters yet will have a chance to test them out alongside the Samurai Showdown rollback beta.

【SAMURAI SHODOWN】
The Steam rollback community beta test will take place from Feb 10th to the 17th (JST)!

All DLC characters can be used, so hop on and play if you own a copy of SAMURAI SHODOWN!#SNK #SamSho pic.twitter.com/w94HuMaYMb

— SNK GLOBAL (@SNKPofficial) January 26, 2023

Netcode like the kind being implemented for the Samurai Shodown rollback beta test is a widely-requested feature in fighting game circles. Though more complex and difficult to implement on the development side, rollback is the preferred style of netcode to use for online matches, because it is able to handle adverse network conditions more effectively than the simpler “delay-based” netcode. Delay netcode was more common in Japanese-made fighting games for a time, in part because many fighting games treated online play and the international scene as extraneous.

As fighting games breached a global audience and began making their main homes on home consoles and PC, it became more common to implement rollback by default. Even now older games are being retrofitted with rollback. Cygames and Arc System Works claimed they had to “rebuild” Granblue Fantasy Versus into the recently-announced Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising in order to implement rollback and cross-platform play.

Samurai Shodown is available on the Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The rollback test will take place on PC via Steam from February 10 to 17, 2023.