Gamers watched in awe as the characters came to life in visual splendor. Years later, the Sega Dreamcast arrived, the first video game console able to produce more than a million polygons a second. That's right, more. As in three times more and that's not pushing it. Soul Calibur more than shows off this fact. As Namco had done with its console conversions in the past, they took Soul Calibur, ripped it apart and remade it into a hardware specification pushing, sixty frame-per-second fighting game monster of a title. Once again, Namco put its best foot forward, as they had with Sony's PlayStation, and showcased the true potential of the Dreamcast console, and all this on its first day in the public view. Upon first pressing the power button on the Dreamcast, I was the embodiment of pure anticipation. The Dreamcast logo came onto the screen in timely fashion. The screen said "Namco", followed by a real-time introduction. That's right, no full motion video, just polygons, generated on the fly. Of course, I wasn't convinced until I played the actual game and play it I did. Fast forward to about two hours later; I shut the Dreamcast off, unplugged it and lifted it up. Nope, no arcade machine under it. I couldn't believe it; this little white box with the swirl on its lid was changing my television into a personal arcade machine.

  I'll start off by saying that the learning curve for Soul Calibur is somewhat high, especially so for two-dimensional fighting fans, such as myself. In other words, forget your button-mashing habits of yesteryear. This is Soul Cailbur and only the most cunning players will master it. That said, I'll explain the fighting system. It's quite similar to its predecessor, Soul Blade on PlayStation, with many improvements and necessary fixes to the somewhat unbalanced gameplay. Don't worry though, if you've never played Soul Blade/Edge, I'm going to explain everything in full about the controls. To start with, most moves are pulled off by pressing a directional on either the digital pad or analog stick, along with one of the three attack buttons. This is the most basic attack. Guarding or blocking is accomplished by holding the A button (the red button), so holding back will only make you retreat. There are also medium level attacks that require you to press two of the three buttons at the same time. For example, if I want a Phoenix Roar, a staff twirling move, when playing as Kilik, I press both X and Y, while stationary. If I press the same combination of buttons as I press forward or back, the move changes. Pressing forward transforms it into Biting Phoenix, a jabbing move, while pressing back changes it into a reversed Phoenix Roar. Have you gone completely cross-eyed yet?

 You can also power-up your existing moves temporarily by doing a Soul Charge, which can be accomplished by pressing X, Y and B at the same time. Anyway, combination-based fighting fans need not worry; Soul Calibur has plenty of combination attacks, though most are treated as extensions of the basic moves. In other words, start with something small, get creative and try using a combination you think will work. Thankfully, Soul Calibur has an in-depth Practice mode to hone your skills before you jump into the many modes of play. If the controls are a bit awkward for you, you can even change your controls, get this, in the middle of a match. Nice touch, Namco. Soul Calibur has an incredibly large amount of variety from the get go. When you begin to play, you'll notice many selectable options on the title screen menu, including Arcade, Versus, Team Battle, Time Attack, Survival, Museum, Practice, Options and Mission Battle. Arcade is the full arcade version of Soul Calibur. Vs. Battle is obviously for playing against a fellow gamer. Team Battle is Vs. Battle with the ability to fight with up to eight characters against eight other characters, one-on-one at a time. Time Attack challenges you to play against the computer and complete the game in as little time as possible. Survival challenges you to beat as many opponents as you can with one life bar. Museum I'll get to in a second. Practice lets you practice, obviously. Options are, well, options. Mission Battle is a returning feature from Soul Blade for PlayStation, which allows you to fight through the game with a special set of rules and objectives. One such objective is to fight against several opponents starting with very little life bar, with your life bar slowly refilling. These missions can bring out the best and worst in you, if you catch my drift, though they are very challenging for expert level players. I don't really consider myself an expert and I still completed all of the Mission Battles, with a considerable bit of effort.

  Museum Mode, now that I've explained the rest, is the trump card of Soul Calibur, a "virtual museum of Soul Calibur treasures", just waiting to be opened. This mode gives you access to a gallery of artwork from the game, for a price; by completing stages in Mission Battle, you earn points and ultimately unlock artwork. Some artwork unlocks new features after it's initially unlocked as well, such as new outfits for the selectable characters, new arenas to fight in, new modes, etc. The only bad thing is that once you've unlocked everything in the Museum Mode, there is really no reason to play Soul Calibur, except to challenge another gamer. The sound effects and music tracks in Soul Calibur are incredible. Crisp, true-to-life audio will greet your ears as you play and leave you wondering whether you really did just face off against a bunch of medieval characters in one-on-one combat. Voices are just as fresh and realistic, with angry screams of defiance, giggles of gladness, spoken mottos, personal taunts, battle cries and more. The level of graphic detail in Soul Calibur is unsettling. As I said before, one million polygons used to look so untouchable before, but Soul Calibur jumps ropes with that kind of geometry. Stages include rain, lens flares from the sun, realistic shadows, flowing water, molten lava, the works. In other words, even the floors look better than most games do and that's saying quite a bit. The character models are actually just as staggering, with realistic facial expressions, in-sync mouth movement, fully rendered hair, smooth edges, real fighting movements and extensive motion captured animations. Soul Calibur is a challenging title as well, especially with the difficulty pushed all the way up. After about thirty hours of flashy, weapons-based fighting, I can safely say that Soul Calibur, with its diverse roster of nineteen playable characters, is not only an excellent console fighting title; Soul Calibur could quite possibly be the greatest, most balanced fighting game ever designed.
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