Soul Calibur

SoulCalibur (ソウルキャリバーSōruKyaribā? ) is a weapons-based 3D fighting game developed by Project Soul and produced byNamco. It is the second game in the Soul series, preceded by Soul Edge (1996). Originally released in arcades in 1998, it ran on the Namco System 12 hardware. In 1999 it was ported to the Dreamcast with improved graphics and new features and became available on Xbox 360's Xbox Live Marketplace in 2008. It is widely regarded as one of the best Dreamcast games and was one of the critically best received fighting games of all time

Gameplay
A screenshot of the Dreamcast version, showing Nightmare fighting SophitiaSee also: Soul Edge#GameplayOne of the biggest innovations introduced by Soulcalibur is the eight-way run. Previous3D fighters had only limited movement along the third axis, with sidesteps and rolls providing useful but unsustained lateral movement. In Soulcalibur, simply holding down ajoystick direction causes the character to run in that direction, giving the player a sense of freedom and deepens the strategy of the game.

Soulcalibur 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, and leads to executing a quick succession of moves. Other fighting games such as the Tekken and Virtua Fighter series have relatively strict buffering requirements, meaning expert timing is required to pull off many combinations, butSoulcalibur features much more lenient timing to successfully execute a buffer.

Finally, the "Guard Impact" offensive blocking maneuver shown in Soul Edge was given a deeper range of techniques inSoulcalibur, allowing players to push back or redirect attacks past themselves as well as swatting away an opponent's weapon to stun them. ===[edit] Characters=== Main article: Soul series charactersSoulcalibur was originally planned to be a dramatic overhaul, featuring only a few select characters to be carried over from its predecessor, Soul Edge. However, nine of the eleven characters from Soul Edge ended up carrying over to Soulcalibur by the time the roster was finalized in the Dreamcast version, with an additional ten new characters joining the ranks.

As with many fighting games, however, many of the new characters were heavily styled after already existing characters from the franchise. For example, new character Maxi has a fighting style and moveset influenced by Soul Edge's Li Long. In fact,Soulcalibur only added three original playing styles, belonging to Ivy, Xianghua and Yoshimitsu. Consequently, Namco has been working since Soulcalibur to gradually separate the individual styles of the characters in order to make each one unique.

In the South Korean version of the game, Mitsurugi was replaced by an English-Japanese swordsman named Arthur.

[edit] Story
The mystical sword of the legends, the "Soul Edge", ended up in the hands of the dreaded pirate Cervantes de Leon 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 through the joined efforts of a Greek divine warrior Sophitia Alexandra and a Japanese female 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 German 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 warriors met on their journey to stop Soul Edge, and with them three sacred weapons join once again.

[edit] Development
After releasing Soul Edge, Namco took some time to evaluate what had made the game successful before jumping into development of its follow-up. Producer Hiroaki Yotoriyama decided to give the sequel a new name instead of just calling it Soul Edge 2 in order to have a fresh start and take the series in a new direction. The name Soulcalibur is aportmanteau of the word soul (as in Soul Edge) and King Arthur's sword Excalibur. Inspired by an internal Namco prototype featuring a character able to run openly in a field, the eight-way run system was implemented. Upon application, the development team was surprised at how well it meshed with their fighting system, and decided to build the rest of the game around it. During development they worked closely with Namco's Tekken development team, sharing ideas and research. Yotoriyama felt that with that cooperation and partnership, they were able to develop "the greatest weapon-based fighting action game in the world".[1]

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 revolve 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.[2] Each character in Soulcalibur was designed around the idea that they could be viewed as a real person could,[3] 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"<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-3" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[4]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">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 to about forty. 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 differences in 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" with give their best effort for the port. The biggest technological change to the Dreamcast port was to render all of the game's stages in full 3D polygons, whereas the far backgrounds in the arcade original were flat, two-dimensional images. Additional content was also added to the game to ensure replay value, based on researching other fighting games marketed at the time. Many of the team's ideas that they were unable to incorporate into the port were eventually used for later games in the series.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-makingof_0-1" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[1]

[edit] Ports
===<span class="editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;float:right;font-size:13px;font-weight:normal;margin-left:5px;">[edit] Dreamcast=== <p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">Soulcalibur was released in Japan for the Dreamcast on August 5, 1999; and in North America as a launch title, on September 9, 1999.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur is one of the first examples of a home conversion of a game being graphically superior to its original arcade counterpart. Among the differences were the improved graphics (including the addition of 3D backgrounds), tweaked gameplay, new game modes, new costumes, and the inclusion of an extra character, Cervantes de Leon.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">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 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" displaying characters performing their katas (in Mission Mode it is possible to add more characters to the "Exhibition Mode", such as Taki and Seung Mina).

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[5] ===<span class="editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;float:right;font-size:13px;font-weight:normal;margin-left:5px;">[edit] Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)=== <p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">In 2008, Namco Bandai Games announced a port of Soulcalibur would be released for the Xbox 360. The port was based on the European Dreamcast version<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[6] and was made available for download on Xbox Live Arcade on July 2, 2008.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-XBLA_6-0" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[7] 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. While the intro is removed from this port, the intro music is still in this port. All content is unlocked by the start of the game. ===<span class="editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;float:right;font-size:13px;font-weight:normal;margin-left:5px;">[edit] iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)=== <p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">On January 19, 2012, Namco Bandai released a port of Soulcalibur for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc. Apple]'s iOS platform. Game modes in this version include Arcade, Time Attack, Survival, Extra Survival, Practice, and Museum mode. The game was released as a Universal App to run at native resolutions on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.<sup class="Template-Fact" style="line-height:1em;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed]

[edit] Reception
<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur sold in excess of one million copies.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-20" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[21] It won the 1999 E3 Game Critics Award for Best Fighting Game and the 2000 Interactive Achievement Award for Console Game of the Year.<sup class="Template-Fact" style="line-height:1em;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">The game received the perfect 10/10 scores from GameSpot<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-GSpot_DC_16-1" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[17] and IGN,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-IGN_DC_18-1" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[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).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Fam_DC_13-1" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[14] As of 2009, game review aggregator website GameRankings has the Dreamcast version ranked as the fifth best-reviewed game of all time, as well as being the highest scoring title in the fighting game genre.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-gr_DC_7-1" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[8]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">Soulcalibur was named as the number one best Dreamcast game by Game Informer in 2007.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-21" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[22] In 2009, IGN also ranked Soulcalibur as the fifth best Dreamcast game.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-22" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[23]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">In addition, it is often considered to be one of the greatest games on all platforms, including: <p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.5em;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.5em;">In 2005, GameSpot ranked Soulcalibur as the sixth best launch title yet, calling it "not only one of the greatest launch games or one of the greatest fighters, but one of the greatest games ever. Period."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-30" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[31]
 * Game Informer in 2001: The Top 100 Games of All Time (74th place).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-23" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[24]
 * IGN in 2003: Top 100 Games (38th place).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-24" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[25]
 * IGN in 2005: Top 100 Games (43rd place).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-25" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[26]
 * IGN in 2006: Readers' Choice The Top 100 Games Ever (sixth place).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-26" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[27]
 * Electronic Gaming Monthly in 2006: The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time (22nd place).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-27" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[28]
 * UGO.com in 2010: Top 25 Fighting Games of All Time (second place).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-ref4_28-0" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[29]
 * Complex in 2011: The 50 Best Fighting Games of All Time (fifth place).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-29" style="line-height:1em;font-weight:normal;">[30]