Bushido Blade 1 and 2
A PSX versus fighting game franchise by Squaresoft, the Bushido Blade series combined an excellent skill based combat mechanic with the visceral, flash of the blade, sudden death of old-school samurai movies. Using a body damage system to track hits meant if your arm is struck you lose use of it, hits to the leg cripple your movement, and a solid blow the head or body is fatal. AI matches are terse, forcing you wade through a series of disposable henchmen trying to conserve viable limbs before facing off against your real opponent, and the 2p matches alternate between lasting exactly 1.73 seconds(the time it takes Kaun's thrown spear to pierce your various important organs from a dead standstill) to nigh on a half an hour of back and forth as you run, jump, dodge, spin, throw each other subweapons back and forth, cut down bamboo and generally pretend to be Toshiro Mifune Jr. The 2nd stands out as one of the most memorable fighting game stories I can remember, particularly in that its actually told IN THE FRIGGING GAME instead of looked up in "Oh, so that's why" way from Wiki-fucking-pedia after you finish.
You can also drop a couple thousand and pick up a used arcade copy of Mazan: Flash of the Blade...
