It's a bad movie based on a good fighting game, the story just like most fighting games is generic and predictable, deviating significantly from the game's story, suffering further from very inconsistent pacing. Like most fighting game films, there's not nearly enough time to give every character something interesting to do, and by the time it's over, you'll likely find your self disappointed that your favorite played a minor role in the story if even that. Hell, I'm pretty sure Ukyo Tachibana doesn't even show up anywhere but in the credits. All the time spent on building up Haohmaru's character could havebeen shortened by cutting in more scenes of these other characters.

The animation is the same lazy stuff you would expect from tv anime of the time. It's plagued by the common time fillers, panning over still images three times, repeating unimpressive key animation, and generally low frame rates. There's really nothing here to be impressed by. At least the spinning katana transition was kinda charming.

The English dubbing isn't terrible, despite being poorly timed. The only huge problem I have is the dog's name. It's poppy, not puppy! This is actually one of the earliest anime AD Vision dubbed which isn't a surprise considering John Ledford was a video game importer before he got into anime.

I haven't played SamSho in quite some time and never was any good at it, but I have to wonder what is the secret power that will allow me to dispatch Earthquake that quickly. Films like this are basically fan service cash grabs preying on the fools who would shell out untold amounts of money instead of pumping coins at the arcade. Or if they were really dedicated they could save their money and ascend to the status of a real hot dog.