Soul Edge - Development

Development

Soul Edge was developed as an experiment by Namco to explore the possibilities of a weapon-based fighting game. It was the first motion capture based video game created using passive optical system markers.

Soul Edge was initially released in the arcades in 1995. A couple of months later, Namco released a fixed version, labeled Soul Edge Ver. II, upon the complaints of players who found the difficulty quite high and the last boss "unbeatable". Hwang (initially a palette swap of Mitsurugi for the Korean version of the game) was introduced to Japanese players with a new movelist, Cervantes became playable, Guard Impacts and Air Combos were implemented, and all the characters received upgraded movelists. The overseas version was renamed Soul Blade to avoid potential complications due to EDGE Games's earlier "EDGE" trademark.

On December 20, 1996, Soul Edge was ported to the Sony PlayStation for the Japanese market and versions labeled Soul Blade came out in 1997 in the USA and Europe. The port kept the Soul Edge Ver. II roster of ten and added five unlockable characters, including SoulEdge, the boss of the game. Other PlayStation-specific features include:

• A new costume for each character, chosen from various works sent by fans, giving each one a total of three different costumes, plus two color variations for the Player 1 and Player 2 costumes. The inclusion, besides the standard Arcade mode, of VS mode, Survival, Team Battle, Time Attack and Training modes.
• A new RPG-styled mode called Edge Master mode, which works as a sort of Story mode for the ten initial characters. The mode presents the selected character's story as a book, while the player moves in a map to various locations and fights in battles, sometimes with handicap rules. Generally, each chapter of the book rewards the player with a weapon.
• An opening CGI cinematic and an individual endings done using the game's engine, rather than still images (as in its sequels, Soulcalibur and Soulcalibur II) or CGI. Each of the ten normally selectable characters have two endings, usually one ending which ends well and another tragic ending. These endings are accessible by pressing a special button/button sequence during certain times, indicated by black bars moving away, while others involve a short minigame, such as Mitsurugi avoiding gunshots. This type of ending was finally brought back in Soulcalibur III.
• The inclusion of seven extra weapons per character, which have different designs and statistics, composed of Power (inflicts more damage), Defense (receives less damage), Strength (damage dealt to enemy's weapon gauge), Durability (resistance of player's weapon gauge) and Weight (changes character's speed). Some weapons also have a special ability, like the ability to damage through defense or restore the player's health.
• The inclusion of three different in-game soundtracks to choose from: the original arcade soundtrack, a studio-recorded version of the arcade soundtrack called Arrange Soundtrack and the Khan Super Session, made expressly for the home version.

In the North American version, clothes were added to Sophitia in the opening cutscene where she would have been nude. In the European version, Li Long's pair of nunchaku were changed to a three-section staff due to the BBFC guidelines which were in place at the time banning the depiction of certain weapons such as nunchaku. In the Japanese version, Cervantes (as Inferno/SoulEdge) appears to be laughing at the end of the opening cutscene.