Soulcalibur is a 1998 fighting game developed by Project Soul and produced by Namco. It is the second game in the Soulcalibur series, preceded by Soul Edge. Originally released in arcades on July 30, 1998, it ran on the Namco System 12 hardware, and was ported to the Dreamcast console in 1999 with new features and improved graphics.

The game centers on the pursuit of the legendary weapon known as Soul Edge, now in the possession of a warrior known as Nightmare, who slaughters countless people to satisfy the blade’s bloodlust. Other warriors pursue him either to claim the weapon for themselves or to destroy it, end his mass murder, and free him of its curse. Developed closely with Namco’s Tekken development team, it is one of the few home console ports that outdid their arcade parent performance-wise. The title brought many innovations to the fighting game genre that include a heavy emphasis on weapons and a unique eight-way movement system.

One of the biggest innovations introduced by Soulcalibur to the gameplay system of its predecessor, Soul Edge, is 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 move in that direction, giving the player a sense of freedom and deepening the strategy of the game.

#gaming #games #ratinggames #soulcalibur #fighting