The samurai has 🍬become one🥃 of Japan’s top pop culture icons. They’re probably number three on the list, just behind pervy vending machines full of *ahem* on street corners, and a taste for lurid entertainment.

Unlike the latter two, there’s a nobility, an all-pervasive sense of strength and honour about the samurai. These warriors from the feudal days are an inscrutable and fascinating bunch, not to mention –and this is key, here, let’s be honest—they were beyond tough-as-nails. Like dinosaurs (albeit dinosaurs with really, really freaking sharp swords and distinctive helmets.

Now, I never thought I’d be comparing dinosaurs and samurai, but that’s an analogy you’ve just got to jump on board with. Much like the long-extinct reptiles, we look back on these fighters with a sense of respect, of fascination with something mystical we can’t quite understand. Also like dinosaurs, it’s a horrible idea to build a theme park to house genetically-engineered samurai, the birth of each exhibit presided over by Richard Attenborough🤪. Stop it, Richard. You’re dead, you can’t coo over every samurai egg that hatches while Sam Neil watches, horrified, over your shoulder.

Anyway. Long story short, samurais are cool. And visceral. That’s a winning combination if ever I’ve seen one, so it’s no surprise that they’ve been the focus of many video games over the years. The question is, how many of said games are worth your time? Maybe you’ve already polished off Dark Souls-like Nioh, and you’re looking to scratch your katana-waving itch again. We’re here to help, friends🍸.

15 Katanas, Combos, Stockings, And Suspenders: Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Muramasa: The Demon Blade hit the Wii in 2009, arriving on the Vita four years later. It’s a side-scrolling action RPG from VanillaWare (Dragon’s Crown, Odin’s Sphere), and you know what that means: 2D visuals so gorgeous you want to add them to your ‘celebrities-I-can-have-my-way-with-if-they-come-to-town-and-my-partner-can’t-get-mad list (which is a thing, Friends told me so).

Muramasa is the story of Princess Momohime, who is inadvertently possessed by the spirit of a wandering samurai. He was aiming for her lover, another samurai, but you know how it is when you’re trying to possess samurais. You always shoot a littl🌄e to the left. We’ve all been there. She gets herself in trouble, and the result is a super fun brawler with over 100 blades to collect and customize.

14 Cel-Shaded Slashin' With Afro Samurai

For people of a certain age, there’s nothing cooler than an afro. Just ask your mama; she’ll tell you what a raging stud muffin The Simpsons’ Disco Stu was back in the day. Presumably, you had to hﷺave cojones like cannonballs to even🐽 consider going out in public with that on your head, hence all the virility-based claims that come with it.

Combine this hairstyle with the always-awesome samurais and you’ve surely got a hit on your hands. That was the reasoning behind anime/manga series Afro Samurai, which then spawned a cel-shaded hack and slash of its own. The plot follows Afro on his journey to avenge the death of his father, who was killed by an enigmatic sharpshooter named Justice. The game itself was nothing special, true enough, but ൩the afro/samurai combo is like a shot of awesome whiskey straight to the jugular of the Irish coffee of badassery.

13 Finish Him In Style With Samurai Shodown

Samurai Shodown, triggering you with its intentional misspellings since 1993. If you’re the kind of stickler who vomits in their mouth just a little bit whenever Mortal Kombat wantonly messes around with Ks and Cs, look away now. Sure, it’s a play ܫon the word Shogun, but 🅰that’s no excuse.

Samurai Shodown (sorry, my bad) is a series of fighting games developed by genre masters SNK. The original was the first game to equip the fighters with weapons and utilize true weapon-based combat. So that’s a unique little sub-genre created right there. The likes of Soul Calibur (which, spoiler alert, we’re going to be taking a look at later in the list) owe a great debt to this one, itself a long-running and successfu🥀l fr𝔉anchise.

12 Noble Warrior Or Katana-Flailing Killer? Way of the Samurai

Much like Masamune, 🌃this one’s a relatively straightforward hack and slash with RPG elements. It centres around a wandering ronin named Kenji, who arrives in a small town in the midst of a power struggle between rival factions. It’s very much a story-driven affair, in which the player’s actions determine both the way the plot unfolds and the kind of man Kenji is. Will you be a goodly hero or the most dastardly and bastardly villain this side of the sushi store? That’s entirely your choice, buddy boy.

Way of the Samurai is a deeply customizable experience in all kinds of ways. Defeated enemies drop their swords, whic✱h you can collect and enhance to your liking. The original title also featured a versus battle mode for two players, which💝 hasn’t returned in any installment to date.

11 Hot Samurai On Viking On Knight Action: For Honor

And now for something a little more intense. As hardcore as juggling flaming chainsaws, rabid wolverines and unstable nuclear warheads with your feet, it’s For Honor.

This multiplayer-centric Ubisoft title is a tactical fighter, which plays out in a very similar way to Dark Souls PVP. The warlord Apollyon has manipulated the samurai, knight and Viking factions into declaring war on each other, so as to slake his lust for blood. You take control of a combatant from one of the three group💙s and engage in arena battles against other foes. These matches take the form of 1-on-1 duels, 2-on-2 skirmishes or an all-out batcrap crazy 4-on-4 rumble. The first rule of Medieval Fight Club is don’t talk about Medieval Fight Club. The second rule is don’t let the beardy Viking slice your torso into spam with a battle-ax the size of the Chrysler building.

10 The Most Stylish Demon Slaying You Ever Saw: Onimusha

In Japanese culture, the Oni are a sort of supernatural, demon-esque creature. You know th🐓e sort of thing: horns, claws, general enormous-ness, questionable sense of personal morality and/or hygiene… in short, they’re not the sorts of guys and gals you want to bring home to meet your mama. These trait🍸s do make them suitably awesome enemies for video games, though.

The Onimusha (‘demon warrior’) series is one of Capcom’s biggest IPs, 🏅action adventures which see you slayꦚing all manner of ghastly-ass Oni as a legendary swordsman. There are some horror elements to the games, as such, but it’s more about raw action and sending demon limbs, torsos, and heads flying about the place like confetti at a very macabre wedding. A good time is had by all.

9 The Only FPS/Swordfighting Simulator To Date:  Red Steel

I know, I hear you. This is a bit of a curveball entry, but I think Red Steel warrants 🐓a placeܫ for a number of reasons. This Wii launch title was the first game to bring us funky motion-sensey katana duels, via the Wii remote and Nunchuk. Dual-wielding a katana and a gun, no less, which is a level of cool you’d never expect from a Nintendo console. After all, what’s more awesome than a katana? Two katanas. What’s —at the very least— 75% as cool as two katanas? A katana and a firearm, that’s what.

The protagonist is no samurai, rather an American gaijin by the name of Scott Munroe. Through his Japanese fiancée (and the assassination of her gangland father), Scott becomes embroiled in all kinds of dodgy Yakuza doings. Quite the culture shock, and an unusually𝔉 ‘grown up’ FPS to arrive at the Wii launch. In a way, Redꦺ Steel played a huge part in selling the console to adult gamers.

8 Turn-Based Tactical Peasant-Bothering:  Sword Of The Samurai

And now, something for the oldies. I don’t know about you, but I was born right at the ass-end of the eighties. As such, I’m a nineties child through and through, unable to remember anything of the previous decade other than my mom’s huge and terrifying hair/glasses. But if you’re a little older than I, you might be familiar with Sword of the Samurai.

This MS-DOS strategy game released in 1989, and was a kind of primitive lovechild of The Sims and Total War. Making a family was your first task, so as to have an heir to continue your line. Your ultimate goal, though, was to become Daimyo through any means necessary. As with Way of the Samurai, you can build your reputation as🌊 an honorable warrior or rise to the top by means of betrayal and murder of your superiors. The latter of which is, naturally, much more fun. Seppuku my ass.

7 One Of The Greatest RTS Titles Ever:  Shogun: Total War

Speaking꧅ of Total War, feudal Japan was where one of PC gaming’s biggest strategy series was born. Arriving in the year 2000, this first instalment introduced us to all the familiar trappings of Total War: Build𓃲ing and reinforcing cities, developing armies, Spending more and more gold trying to bribe away armies who’d serve you your gonads on a platter if you tried to fight them directly… good times all around.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get to be the Shogun of all Japan in a past life. If I even had one, I’d probably have been a Medieval toilet cleaner who fell into the crap pit of some rich family and drowned. That’s just the way my luck goes. The closest I can get, then, is experiencing♛ that thrill vicariously through the game. I’ve followed Total War through Ancient Rome, the Napoleonic Wars and all of that, hooked immediately 𝔍on the campaign/battle mix of Shogun.

6 Because Mitsurugi's Man-tastic Beard Is Still The Stuff Of Legend: Soul Calibur

Once again, friends, I hear you. Soul Calibur iꦍsn’t a samurai game per se. As a weapon fighter, as I say, it owes🌸 so much to the earlier Samurai Shodown, but that’s a pretty loose link in terms of giving it a legit place on the list. Loose enough to drop right off and roll under the couch.

No. Namco’s iconic fighter is here for one main reason: It features gaming’s studliest, man-bun-iest samurai of all, M✱itsurugi. A top tier character whichever way you slice it, Heishiro Mitsurugi is a series staple. He’s been pursuing the infamous swordsman Nightmare, hoping for a fight worthy of his skill, since the series began. Character motivations in this series can be utterly nutty, but this I can respect. That’s the samurai way.