Soul Edge

Soul Edge (ソウルエッジ) is a fighting arcade game which was initially released by Namco in 1995; it runs on Namco System 11 hardware and is the first installment in their Soulcalibur series (as it became known after its second installment, which had that name, got released three years later, in 1998). "Soul Edge" is the name of the demonic sword around which the series' storyline revolves - and Pac-Man also makes an appearance for the game's attract sequence.

This game was the second three-dimensional fighting game that featured characters who fought with weapons; however, weapons in a fighting game were not new, for both Namco's own Knuckle Heads (1992) and SNK's Samurai Shodown series (which started in 1993) are examples of two-dimensional fighting games which showcase characters who fight with weapons. Apart from the aesthetic benefits, giving the characters weapons allows for a greater diversity between them, which means that there is a character for every style of play - and some went on to appear in Super World Stadium '99 in 1999.

On May 16, 1996 (less than a full year after the original release), Namco released a "fixed" version of this game named Soul Edge Ver. II (ソウルエッジバージョンII) after a number of players complained that they found the difficulty quite high and the final boss "unbeatable"; additional changes included things such as the introduction of Hwang (initially a palette-swap of Mitsurugi in the game's Korean version) to Japanese players with a new move list, Cervantes becoming playable and Guard Impacts and Air Combos getting implemented along with all of the characters' move lists being changed. The game was then later ported to the PlayStation on December 20, 1996 - and the reason why the international versions for this port were released as "Soul Blade" in 1997 was because when Namco tried to register their original name as a trademark outside Japan they ended up getting sued by Edge Games (who claimed they owned the exclusive right to use the word "edge" in videogames).