Soulcalibur

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Soulcalibur
North American Dreamcast boxart
Developer(s)	Namco
Publisher(s)	Namco Namco Bandai (XBLA)
Designer(s)	Hiroaki Yotoriyama
Aspect ratio	480p (EDTV) 480i (SDTV)
Platform(s)	Dreamcast, Namco System 12, Xbox Live Arcade[1]
Release date(s)	Arcade July 30, 1998 DC JP August 5, 1999 NA September 9, 1999 EU December 1, 1999 XBLA: July 2, 2008
Genre(s)	Versus fighting
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players simultaneously
Rating(s)	CERO: B (XBLA version) ESRB: T (Teen)
Input methods	8-way Joystick, 4 Buttons
Cabinet	Upright
Arcade system	System 12
Display	Raster, 640 x 480 pixels (Horizontal), 65536 colors

Soulcalibur (ソウルキャリバー, SōruKyaribā^?) is a fighting game developed and produced by Namco. It is the second game in the Soul series. Originally released in the arcades running on the Namco System 12 hardware, Soulcalibur was ported to the Dreamcast with improved graphics and new features. Soulcalibur was later released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2008.

The Dreamcast port is often cited as the greatest fighting game of all time, and even one of the greatest games across all genres; it is ranked as one of the best games of all time by review aggregator site GameRankings.^[2]

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Prologue 3 Characters 4 Development 5 Ports 5.1 Dreamcast 5.2 Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade) 6 Reception 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Gameplay

Soul Edge/Soul Blade had a strong fanbase, but when Soulcalibur was released in the arcades, it was not as popular as Namco would have liked or expected. Luckily for the series, Soulcalibur was picked up for the Dreamcast, and became a smash hit almost overnight. Soulcalibur, the second game in the series, was set 3 years after the original and introduced a revolutionary feature, the Eight-Way Run. Previous 3D fighters had only limited movement along the third axis, with sidesteps and rolls providing useful but unsustained lateral movement. In Soulcalibur, simply holding down a joystick direction causes the character to run in that direction. This gives the player a sense of freedom and deepens the strategy of the game. Soul calibur also improved gameplay with "forgiving buffering." Buffering is executing the input for one move before the player's character has finished recovering from their previous move. It is important for executing quick strings of moves. Other games such as Tekken and Virtua Fighter have relatively strict buffering requirements, meaning expert timing is required to pull off many combinations, while Soulcalibur's relatively lenient buffering lets players focus more on the game and less on the controls. Finally, the "Guard Impact" offensive blocking maneuver shown in Soul Edge was given a deeper range of techniques (allowing players to push back or redirect attacks past themselves as well as swatting away an opponent's weapon to stun them).

[edit] Prologue

The mystical sword of the legends, the "Soul Edge", ended up in the hands of the dread pirate Cervantes of Spain. For the next 25 years he stayed dormant on the remnants of a Spanish port town, taking the souls of those who reached him during their search of the sword. His reign of terror was soon to start, but the joined efforts of a divine warrior (Sophitia) and an underground ninja (Taki) stopped him, breaking one of the twin Soul Edge blades in the process. As it was about to tear itself apart, a young knight (Siegfried) approached the port town. The moment he took the hilt of the cursed blade, Soul Edge released a bright column of light into the sky. This was known as the "Evil Seed", bound to bring calamity and death across its path.

Three years after those events, Soul Edge uses Siegfried as its host, and now Siegfried is Nightmare, a knight wearing azure armor. Europe plunges into a vortex of slaughters as he and his followers claim souls to strengthen the blade in its weakened state. Unknown to them, a group of young warriors met on their journey to stop Soul Edge, and with them three sacred weapons join once again.

[edit] Characters

Soulcalibur was originally planned to be a dramatic overhaul, featuring only a few select characters to be carried over from its predecessor, Soul Edge. While the initial plan did not exactly follow through—as nine of the eleven characters from the original roster had carried over by the time the game was ported to the Dreamcast--the game still did manage to nearly double the size of the roster from the previous title. Most of these characters were readily available from the second the player opens the package.

But although the game added ten new characters, several of them were simply updated versions of previously existing styles; for example Kilik's moveset was largely taken from Seung Mi Na, and Xianghua's was largely based on Hwang, whereas Maxi was a greatly updated version of what Soul Edge's Li Long would have been if he had returned. Of three of the main antagonists, Nightmare's moveset was largely taken from Siegfried, Astaroth's from Rock; and Lizardman was based primarily on Soul Edge's featured heroine, Sophitia. In the Korean version of the game, Mitsurugi was replaced by a Caucasian swordsman named Arthur because the image of the samurai was not very popular with the Korean people^{[citation needed]}. Added to that is the fact that both Edge Master and Inferno switch their styles to match randomly-chosen existing characters' movelists with each individual round of fighting. In fact, Soulcalibur only added two truly original playing styles, shown in Ivy and Yoshimitsu; and even Yoshimitsu had some moves borrowed from established character Mitsurugi as well as the character of the same name in the Tekken series. Additionally, Taki has experienced a change of her own now that she wields dual tantōs instead of one. Consequently, Namco has been working hard since Soulcalibur to gradually separate the roster's styles until the series features completely original styles for each of its characters.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Development

After developing Soul Edge, Namco decided to wait instead of immediately pursuing a sequel, and evaluate what had made the game successful. Deciding to take the sequel in a different direction, producer Hiroaki Yotoriyama changed the name of the series to reflect the decision. Trial and error was done to experiment with different ideas, resulting in the creation of the game's 8-way-run system, inspired by a prototype game shown at Namco featuring a character able to run openly in a field. Upon application, the development team were surprised at how well it meshed with their fighting system, and decided to build around it. During development they worked closely with Namco's Tekken development team, sharing ideas and research. Yotoriyama felt that due to the partnership, they were able to develop "the greatest weapon-based fighting action game in the world".^[3]

Yotoriyama has described the game's concept as expressing "fun and diversity in weapon combat", citing the contrast in how one weapon would affect gameplay compared to another and how they would react to each other upon clashing. Each character's fighting style was designed to revolved around their weapon, though he noted that because of the differences they experienced difficulty in balancing the gameplay. He described the availability of movement in comparison to Tekken 3 as a large contrast between the two series and more tactical, and emphasized how it interacted with the game's "ring out" feature.^[4] Each character in Soulcalibur was designed around the idea that they could be viewed as a real person could,^[5] and to this end, motion creator Masataka Ishiguro emphasized the arm and leg movements for each character in relation to their weapon, wanting players to "feel the individual motions and the realism within the game"^[6]

The team for the arcade version of Soulcalibur consisted of roughly 60 people working on Namco's System 12 hardware, while the team developing the home port was reduced roughly 40. Given a deadline of seven months to coincide with the North American launch of the Dreamcast, the transition was difficult for the team, due to the difference between the hardware. However due to the similar capabilities and limits of each system, content was left intact between the two versions, with Yotoriyama feeling that the team was "obsessed" to give their best effort for the port. Additional content was added to the game to ensure replay value, based on researching other fighting games marketed at the time. Ideas not incorporated into the port were recycled for later games in the series.^[3]

[edit] Ports

[edit] Dreamcast

This section requires expansion.

Soulcalibur was released in Japan for the Dreamcast in August 5, 1999; and in North America as a launch title, in September 9, 1999.

The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur is often cited as an example of a home conversion of a game being vastly superior to the original. Among the differences were the improved graphics (the DC version often being cited as the prettiest game of all time upon its release), tweaked gameplay, new game modes, new costumes, and the inclusion of an extra character Cervantes de Leon.

The Dreamcast version features new modes such as the Team Battle, Survival and the Training Mode. In Missions Mode the player completes various missions to attain points, which can be used to buy various art and costumes. Another feature added is the artwork section, containing both official artwork, fanart and High-res pictures. Also unlockable are a "liquid metal" version of the characters' costume and a "Battle Theater" mode, plus a way to modify the opening introduction theme by changing the characters appearing in it, and an "Exhibition Mode" in where you can see the characters performing their 'katas' alone (obviously done with motion capture, which makes for an eye-pleasing movement). In Mission Mode you can also add characters to the "Exhibition Mode", such as Taki and Seung Mina.

The North American Dreamcast version of the game removes one of Voldo's suggestive codpieces featuring a bull. However, the codpiece is present in the European and Japanese versions, as well as the North American Xbox 360 version. The European Dreamcast version was distributed and advertised by Sega Europe.^[7]

[edit] Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)

On April 16, 2008, Namco Bandai announced a port of Soulcalibur would be released for the Xbox 360. The port was based on the European Dreamcast version^[8] and was made available for download on Xbox Live Arcade on July 2, 2008.^[1] While the game included HD updated graphics and various Live leaderboards, online play was absent which makes it an exception amongst most games ported to Xbox Live Arcade. Other features from the Dreamcast version (Museum, etc., with the exception of Mission Battle) are also in the game. All content is unlocked by the start of the game.

[edit] Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	96.26% (Dreamcast)[2] 78.91% (XBLA)[9]
Metacritic	98 (Dreamcast)[10] 79 (XBLA)[11]
Review scores
Publication	Score
1UP.com	B- (XBLA)[12]
Electronic Gaming Monthly	10/10 (Dreamcast)
Eurogamer	8/10(XBLA)[13]
Famitsu	40/40 (Dreamcast)[14]
Game Informer	9.25/10 (Dreamcast)[15]
GamePro	(Dreamcast) [16]
GameSpot	10/10 (Dreamcast)[17] 7.5/10 (XBLA)[18]
IGN	10/10 (Dreamcast)[19] 8.1/10 (XBLA)[20]

By 1999, the Dreamcast port of Soulcalibur sold one million copies.^[21] The game is often considered to be one of the greatest games of all time, receiving perfect 10 scores from GameSpot,^[17] a Platinum Award from Electronic Gaming Monthly, a 10.0 from IGN,^[19] and being the second game ever to get a perfect 40/40 by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu (the first being The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time).^[14] It is also currently listed as one of the best reviewed games of all time on the video-game-dedicated review aggregating site, GameRankings.^[2] Soulcalibur won the 1999 E3 Game Critics Award for Best Fighting Game and the 2000 Interactive Achievement Award for Console Game of the Year.

Soulcalibur was placed as EGM's 22th best game ever on its "The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time" list.^[22] IGN listed it as the 38th greatest game of all time on their 2003 top 100 list,^[23] the 43rd in 2005,^[24] and was voted the sixth greatest game in the 2006 readers' picks version.^[25] Later, in their "Top 25 Dreamcast Games", they placed Soulcalibur as the 5th best.^[26] It was also placed as the best Dreamcast game by Game Informer^[27] and Gamesradar^[28].

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Offical Site
• Soulcalibur at GameFAQs

v • d • e Soul video game series Games Soul Edge/Blade · Soulcalibur · II · III · Legends · IV · Broken Destiny Characters Astaroth · Cassandra · Cervantes · Hilde · Ivy · Li Long · Necrid · Nightmare · Sophitia · Talim · Tira · Voldo Other articles Discography · Dance, Voldo, Dance