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[bender]

Great video. I just recently played through Weapon Master Mode in Soul Calibur II. I wonder if Namco will ever port the full version Soul Calibur to modern systems. I'd love to revisit the Mission Mode.

 

[Timu]

Great video. Hope they continue to do more retro passion projects like this.

They will!

 

[M3d10n]

Oh yeah, I remember going to a game rental store that had bought a Dreamcast to see it with friends and they had Soul Calibur going. It was truly mind blowing. I barely couldn't process everything that was going on. The colors, the fluidity, the sharp but not-jaggy visuals, the character animations! They had actual fingers! Their faces were fully modelled and animated! Flowing clothing! You could even notice bounciness in Ivy's ass (and Astaroth's pecs, lol) and things like the eye in Nightmare's sword twitching around.

While DOA2 was even more incredible, Soul Calibur popped my cherry first.

 

[jsnepo]

I hope DF Retro makes an episode about the texture smoothing feature of the PS2 for PS1 games. Some games such as Metal Gear Solid looks great with it enabled.

 

[Futaleufu]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it on the thread already, but another great thing about SC on Dreamcast were the very short load times, specially compared to the PS1 games of that era. Dead or Alive 2 may be the only game of that era that improves on the load times.

 

[Timu]

I hope DF Retro makes an episode about the texture smoothing feature of the PS2 for PS1 games. Some games such as Metal Gear Solid looks great with it enabled.

That would be awesome, hope they do that one day.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

I was madly in love with Soul Blade at the time (well, duh) after buying a Playstation pretty much just for that game and I tracked down every single bit of Soul Calibur info as it was released in arcades (I have some artwork dated august 1998 still on the drive). I was nowhere near a place to play it, but I followed everything online as the characters slowly released one by one. Then I started waiting for the inevitable PS version and was devastated that Dreamcast stole it. That was still only roughly a year after I got Soul Blade (1997-1998) so it felt like a blow. I quickly realized that the game was infinitely better than any PSone port could have been, and promptly decided to get that one as well.

Then the Dreamcast was nearing release as I went into university, and I was lucky to have a great game shop nearby. I picked up the console with Power Stone and then it took a month or two more until Soul Calibur released. I had it ordered, but it turned out that it would arrive at least ONE DAY later. So when I got to try it in the store on the release day, I couldn't resist picking up another copy, and ended up selling the other to a friend. That's how obsessed I was.

I think it was one of the few of my favourite games that actually lived up to the hype. Most others I grew to love eventually and just realized that they were that great. Soul Calibur was love at first sight.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

I use to mess around with that intro sequence a lot. To bad other games didn't copy that.

 

[Dead Man Typing]

I hope DF Retro makes an episode about the texture smoothing feature of the PS2 for PS1 games. Some games such as Metal Gear Solid looks great with it enabled.

If it could be rolled into an episode on Bleem! for Dreamcast then that would make for an interesting comparison.

Did John cover Bleem previously? I feel like it was mentioned in an episode but never in depth.

 

[Pop-O-Matic]

If it could be rolled into an episode on Bleem! for Dreamcast then that would make for an interesting comparison.

Did John cover Bleem previously? I feel like it was mentioned in an episode but never in depth.

He covered it in the last episode on Quake 2.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I use to mess around with that intro sequence a lot. To bad other games didn't copy that.

IIRC one of the PS2 Dynasty Warrior games has that feature.

EDIT: Yep. DW4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4J50eTLss

Oh wait. DW5 as well? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcCVRFIgJgc

 

[Dash Kappei]

Soul Blade was best.

/s

 

[AmyS]

Here are a ton of SoulCalibur articles, both arcade and Dreamcast.

EDGE (UK), Next Generation and NextGen

(EDGE)

(Next Generation)

(NextGen)

Electronic Gaming Monthly

GamePro

GamePro - Fighters Edge

various Dreamcast Magazines (mostly U.S. some UK)
(So many different DC magazines, couldn't get every scan from each one)

 

[Dante83]

I wish they did a vid on the first tekken tag on ps2. It took a giant leap from the arcade as well. It was a fun time back in the late 1999/2000!

 

[SomewhatGroovy]

Funny, with Tekken 7 released and 3D fighters back in my mind, I just browsed the Xbox Live store not even an hour ago looking for this game and SCII. Not only was the first game just sheer bliss, it still has what is one of the best OSTs in a game imho. So much so that it inspired me to take up my artistic endeavors.

Yeah, think I'll pay the $10 for the Arcade version of 1 on XBL.

 

[AmyS]

Added more SC scans to my post above ^

And here.

Enjoy.

 

[Creamium]

Oh man I'm pretty giddy about this, guess what's coming up in a future ep:

 

[Brandon F]

Added more SC scans to my post above ^

Enjoy.

I'm more convinced that Fighting Game Face-Off article is more about shitting on MK Gold than it is actually debating the merits of six games...

 

[Ganondorfo]

The last amazing Soul Calibur game was for the PS2 (3) and then it got generic and with 5, almost nobody cared anymore for this franchise, hence why we havent seen a new Soul Calibur since.

 

[AmyS]

SC III on PS2 is the only game I haven't played...

That and Namco's System 246 Soul Calibur III Arcade Edition.

Can't believe I passed it up.

Here's 60fps footage of the Arcade Edition on real hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0fFrWme630

 

[sixteen-bit]

I'm sad SC3 arcade edition was never backported to consoles. Supposedly it fixed a lot of SC3's issues and Hwang was back.

SC3 is where the series shit the bed in terms of art direction though, and it never recovered in that regard.

 

[SkylineRKR]

This is the heart, this is the soul still the best printed ad ever.

I think SC3 was a mistake. It was Ps2 only, while the second game did very well on GC also. And it was quite a mess. People loved CotS, CaS and Tales of Souls but all CotS did was corrupting my save. I didn't like tales of souls much, I think it had some dumb QTE. I rather play Arcade. Art direction of SC3 was shit, and the game felt more low budget in general. Have never played AE but I doubt I'll like it as much as SC1 and 2.

The 4th was crap with having almost no content, those critical moves, SW characters and bad netcode. The 5th had a lousy story mode, needlessly overhauled lineup (fuck Patroklos and Natsu), also not much content but its gameplay was spot on. SCV was in dire need of a Super version.

 

[AmyS]

SoulCalibur arcade flyers and Dreamcast back covers for each region.

I'm enjoying the heck out of the HD 720p XBLA version. Needs to be re-released on current consoles (Xbox One BC doesn't count) with everything intact, widescreen, 1080p, online multiplayer, like SC II HD Online.