Soulcalibur (video game)
1998 video game
Soulcalibur is a 1998 fighting game developed and published 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 PlayStation-based hardware, and was ported to the Dreamcast 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.
Soulcalibur received unanimous critical applause upon release; it is one of the highest-rated video games on Metacritic, where it holds a 98 rating. It won the majority of Game of the Year awards in its respective year, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest fighting games and one of the greatest video games ever made, topping numerous "best of" lists in years following. The North American home version was released as a launch game for the Dreamcast, playing a part in its successful launch.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1060715. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 6 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Soulcalibur (video game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.