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"Freed" Sadam (Sameed/Byron) 2.0 is the Yoshimitsu of Albion
7 years ago
Sadam was a Sameed and Byron fusion character that ended up being way more popular than his component parts. You may know them better as Samada, which is the name they went by in The Elite series back in the 90's. Their name has always been Sadam but it was changed to Samada to prevent a backlash by ignorant observers who tied the name and therefore the character to a certain political dictator of same name. Sadam's, Sameed's and Byron's names are all named after real people within the Albion fandom who had those names rather than any coincidences with other figures. Indeed Sadam in particular suffered a hard time because of sharing the same name as the dictator and years later had their name changed by Depol to Amir.
Sadam's fighting style was always a weird one and mostly the product of software limitations at the time of making my '98 fighting game 13th Hour which is set in the Albion universe. Sadam's original fighting style was very similar to Droit And Gauche with the left and right hand side of his body mirroring his each other's actions. This style of play however only functioned using 1 control set in 13th Hour where alternating left and right strokes were replaced by a single button. This confusing system where one set of controls applied to one character and another set of controls applied to another is the main reason why characters with rigidly fixed controls like Sadam and the Russian team from RPM III Gamma have featured very little in more recent Albion content and not because of any controversy surrounding the characters.
Albion's new control system is based around a single action button where melee combat is made by the usage of that button like combining an action with a direction. Though this is similar to what was done before in the original controls horizontal swings and forward thrusts were on 2 separate buttons. This time around the action button changes between horizontal and thrusting attacks depending on the point in the combo. For example Versus' flurry of punches begins with a jab to straight combo and then follows it up with a pair of hooking punches. Originally you'd have to press thrust twice and then horizontal twice.
The problem with this being that his piston push combo which was horizontal twice and then thrust twice cannot be simply the action button 4 times because that's already used for the flurry and so the controls have had to be altered so the combo is still possible but by other means. Similarly Sadam had the same problem where thrust to horizontal and horizontal to thrust combos would result in the same pattern of buttons. For that reason, especially with his very rigid fighting style, his fighting style has had to be completely redesigned with the new style being dubbed "Sadam 2.0" or "Freed Sadam" after the offensive "Free Sadam" meme.
This new style however is mostly designed around Sadam's unusual vertical attack technique in which he spun the sword in his hand. Now a lot of his swinging attacks result in the weapon being spun in his hand which makes his fighting style resemble that of Yoshimitsu from the Tekken series. This isn't the only way in which the styles are similar though, as certain leaning and stepping moves Sadam now does move in a similar fashion to Yoshimitsu's special attacks or combo chain moves and of course Sadam has retained his rolling kicks and punches which already shared some similarity to Yoshimitsu's finishers and recovery attacks. This has resulted in him being dubbed "Albion's Yoshimitsu" despite the fact that all of Sadam's current fighting style is simply duel broadsword style of Kung Fu.
Anyway, it's nice to see this old Albion character getting a revamp in Series 3 even if he's completely outclassed by other characters now. Maybe he'll develop further into a more impressive fighter or maybe he'll find ways to compensate for his lack of attack power, who knows. Here's to the future.
Sadam's fighting style was always a weird one and mostly the product of software limitations at the time of making my '98 fighting game 13th Hour which is set in the Albion universe. Sadam's original fighting style was very similar to Droit And Gauche with the left and right hand side of his body mirroring his each other's actions. This style of play however only functioned using 1 control set in 13th Hour where alternating left and right strokes were replaced by a single button. This confusing system where one set of controls applied to one character and another set of controls applied to another is the main reason why characters with rigidly fixed controls like Sadam and the Russian team from RPM III Gamma have featured very little in more recent Albion content and not because of any controversy surrounding the characters.
Albion's new control system is based around a single action button where melee combat is made by the usage of that button like combining an action with a direction. Though this is similar to what was done before in the original controls horizontal swings and forward thrusts were on 2 separate buttons. This time around the action button changes between horizontal and thrusting attacks depending on the point in the combo. For example Versus' flurry of punches begins with a jab to straight combo and then follows it up with a pair of hooking punches. Originally you'd have to press thrust twice and then horizontal twice.
The problem with this being that his piston push combo which was horizontal twice and then thrust twice cannot be simply the action button 4 times because that's already used for the flurry and so the controls have had to be altered so the combo is still possible but by other means. Similarly Sadam had the same problem where thrust to horizontal and horizontal to thrust combos would result in the same pattern of buttons. For that reason, especially with his very rigid fighting style, his fighting style has had to be completely redesigned with the new style being dubbed "Sadam 2.0" or "Freed Sadam" after the offensive "Free Sadam" meme.
This new style however is mostly designed around Sadam's unusual vertical attack technique in which he spun the sword in his hand. Now a lot of his swinging attacks result in the weapon being spun in his hand which makes his fighting style resemble that of Yoshimitsu from the Tekken series. This isn't the only way in which the styles are similar though, as certain leaning and stepping moves Sadam now does move in a similar fashion to Yoshimitsu's special attacks or combo chain moves and of course Sadam has retained his rolling kicks and punches which already shared some similarity to Yoshimitsu's finishers and recovery attacks. This has resulted in him being dubbed "Albion's Yoshimitsu" despite the fact that all of Sadam's current fighting style is simply duel broadsword style of Kung Fu.
Anyway, it's nice to see this old Albion character getting a revamp in Series 3 even if he's completely outclassed by other characters now. Maybe he'll develop further into a more impressive fighter or maybe he'll find ways to compensate for his lack of attack power, who knows. Here's to the future.
