The Video Game Revue

Soul Edge

Soul Edge is the missing link in the evolution that lead to the development of Soul Calibur, and obviously Soul Calibur II. It seems like everyone knows about Soul Calibur, but a lot of people seem to talk about it as if it was some brilliant game that popped out of nowhere--a totally original work. Wrong! Let me fill you in on an informal bit of history.

Let's go pretty far back--not as far back in fighting game history as it is possible to go, but pretty far. Before there were tournament fighters, there were "street brawlers." The distinction is that in a street brawler game, the player faces off against many weak enemies, whereas a tournament fighter typically pits the player against a single strong opponent. Street brawlers began with the likes of Karateka and Double Dragon, so far as I know. What I do know for certain is that tournament fighters did not become wildly popular until the arrival of Street Fighter II, and we all know how big of a deal that was. Halo 2 has nothing on the phenominon that SF2 created.

The genre of 2D tournament fighters plodded along for quite a while before Sega's Virtua Fighter, which took the genre into 3D. Right from the start, it was apparent that although Virtua Fighter was similar to a 2D tournament fighter, there were significant differences between the 2D fighter genre and the 3D fighter genre. Thus, the 3D tournament fighter became a genre of its own.

In response to Virtua Fighter, Namco launched Tekken--another 3D tournament fighter, which was roughly as crude as Virtua Fighter. Tekken evolved into Tekken 2, which I personally consider to be the most influential 3D tournament fighting game ever made, but I'm hardly an authority on the subject. At this point, you're probably thinking "yeah, then Tekken 2 became Tekken 3--we get it already." Well, not quite.

Before there was Tekken 3, but after there was Tekken 2, there was Soul Edge. Soul Edge is the direct descendant of Tekken 2, and directly along the line of ancestry of Soul Calibur. Soul Edge was basically Tekken 2 with swords, and featured the initial cut of the Soul Calibur character line-up that we all know today, including Mitsurugi, Sigfried, Seung Mina, Sophitia, Voldo, and Cervantes.

After Soul Edge came the home version, for PlayStation, known as Soul Blade. Soul Blade introduced a quest mode and a bunch of extras, much like what you get on the home version of Soul Calibur II. Interestingly enough, it was also graphically superior to Soul Edge, which just goes to show how great PlayStation graphics were relative to a lot of other gaming hardware at the time. And it was the first PlayStation game I ever bought, heh. Needless to say, that was one awesome game, and it is still worth a look today, if you happen to run across a copy. (It's not very rare at all. I see copies at EB Games all of the time.)

From Soul Edge/Blade came Soul Calibur--first in the arcades, and then for Sega Dreamcast. The rest is history.

posted by Parappa @ 1:22 PM