| | | | Titles in the series have no space, ie SoulCalibur. I never noticed this back in the day; however, these days sites like GameFAQs and MobyGames definitely use the titles with no space. |
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"Boss borrows weapons from rest of cast"
Voldo is from Palermo in the Kingdom of Sicily, Wikipedia says; and "[SoulCalibur] is the fourth-highest-rated video game of all time, with a 98 rating on Metacritic."
OH so The game is set in 1583. Err well that's when the story you see in the first gallery w/ Cervantes, Taki, Sophitia, and Siegfried happens. The game itself starts in 1586, I think (Siegfried has corrupted into Nightmare from taking Soul Edge from Cervantes). There were two Soul Edges! (Sophy breaks one in that gallery slideshow.) Cervantes was not in the arcade version.
"The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur sold in excess of one million copies by December 1999.[40] It is the second biggest selling game on the system."
"was for nearly a decade the last game to receive a perfect rating from IGN, until the release of Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008. It is the second game ever to get a perfect 40/40 from Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu (the first being The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). As of 2017, game review aggregator website GameRankings has the Dreamcast version ranked as the seventh best-reviewed game of all time, as well as being the highest-scoring title in the fighting game genre." (End of 2019, last IA capture, it was 9th; top non-Mario/Zelda/GTA.)
It's #4 on Metacritic (top are Zelda Ocarina, then Tony Hawk 2, then GTA IV).
"During development they worked closely with Namco's Tekken development team..."
"The team for the arcade version of Soulcalibur consisted of roughly 60 people working on Namco's System 12 hardware"
"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." |
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Trying out single-player options and gameplay modes in the Japanese version of SoulCalibur on a Japanese Dreamcast! I play through Arcade and Time Attack as Voldo (those modes appear to be pretty much the same, except Time Attack has a fixed difficulty setting that feels about equivalent to the default Medium difficulty), fumble my way through some Missions, unlock some Gallery art, etc.
Toggle to 2P costume with Y button. According to a FAQ, five characters have a 3rd costume, unlocked in Mission Battle mode. Uh and GameFAQs says two of the female characters have selectable color underwear--in the Japanese version only. I did not try this; I already developed what I felt was an awkward sort of crush on Ivy when I played the NA version of this game back in the day and uh yeah gonna try not fixating on bits of virtual women's clothing. : P
"Quick Character Selection" just makes the portraits on the character selection screen slightly smaller, I think. ^ _^ Do love the quick continue (if "Character Change at Continue" is off) in Arcade mode. Start button doesn't pause in Time Attack and Survival, which freaked me out a little, but I guess they're trying to establish a level playing field for leaderboard competition.
8-on-8 Team Battle definitely feels copied from Tekken (3 I suppose; I mentioned 4 but that was on PS2, four years after SC (2002 vs 1998)), as does the menu thumbnail in Options showing which modes use each option. OH yeah well they're both Namco franchises--boy did I space on that--so there we go.
Had to use my phone's translation cam to figure out a few missions from their pause screen hint in Japanese--like the one where you just have to run in a circle around Edge Master. ^ _^ Tricky one was the one where I had to hit the opponent with an unblockable; finally tried a move with a purple oval next to it in the pause Command List, and that did it. There are a lot of spheroids per move shown on the Command List and I'm not sure what they mean.
Controls turned out to be easier to map to my rewired PS4 stick (to DC through Brook Super Converter) 'cause all you have to do is hold the button you want to set, then left/right to pick the function. A means Horizontal Attack and B means Vertical Attack, that's a little confusing esp since A and B are also names of DC face buttons. : P I'd wanted to unmap Guard entirely 'cause I don't like holding a button all the time, but it's also used for throws (there are two: G+A and G+B; there's also a Kick button), and for recoveries and parries/repels; I don't seem to be smart enough to remember to use recoveries and I'm definitely not good enough at fighting games to use parries or repels so I suppose I could just map the two throw buttons instead--err well aside from that one early mission where you have to use a parry/repel, maybe. = P
Forgot how effectively an orchestral score like the one here turns my mumbles into real gibberish; gotta use a lower game volume next time. |
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~ Frames of light punch input lag on my set-up:
SoulCalibur
Dreamcast: 4
Flycast widescreen & internal 8K: 2
Flycast: 2 |
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Playing Ivy through Arcade mode in Flycast, with widescreen enabled and "internal resolution" at 8K. |
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I do not know what the demon snuggling image at the end of Sophitia's story here is all about--couldn't find anything in FAQs etc. = oo |
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Looks and sounds great, but the flashy move sets aren't very compelling as disciplines.
Taki is kinda fun 'cause she's super fast; totally has nothing to do with her 2P top being slightly transparent. ]_] I enjoy Yoshimitsu's f+K flying knee, and Lizard Man is just kinda fun for being cute and savage, not to bigger, faster, and stronger than pretty much everyone.
Siegfried is pretty much a Nightmare clone and Rock is pretty much an Astaroth clone. They have nice costumes.
With Nightmare and Astaroth I pretty much just do their ridiculously long poke, which is boring (and gets so hosed if they happen to move to the side ; ). |
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A few gallery things unlocked, also I tried some 8-on-8 Team Battles at various difficulties.
I think another reason I'm feeling like bouncing off the game is that probably due to the offense-friendliness, fast movement, and long-range attacks, my ergonomic block button boycott feels less viable here than in Virtua Fighter, where you can just back away from the CPU if you don't want to get hit, usually.
I forgot the Options screen shows which settings affect which modes, so yeah I'd have known immediately that the difficulty setting worked in Team Battle. ; )
Quite a difficulty jump between Very and Ultra Hard! = o |
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