‘Tis the season for financial results. In keeping with the trend, Namco Bandai released theirs tonight, and amidst all the bean-counting, also revealed some sales figures for their tentpole franchises.
With this, the seventh new character to join the Soulcalibur IV line up, we’re starting to notice a trend. Kamikirimusi, like her predecessors Shura, Scheherezade, Algol Fear, and Ashlotte, is a female fighter designed by a well known Japanese artist, this time by guest artist Hirokazu Hisayuki. She’ll fight with a very large metal club/mace and satisfy fans of exposed upper thigh flesh.
While we’ve still got several weeks before we can get our hands on Soulcalibur IV, Xbox 360 users can gear up this Wednesday by downloading the original Soulcalibur for Xbox Live Arcade. The game has been given a fresh coat of paint to support high-definition resolutions, as well as multiplayer support in the form of online leaderboards. No online multiplayer, sadly, but the original for the Dreamcast didn’t support online multiplayer either and it did just fine. All this can be yours for 800 Microsoft points.
Also appearing on XBLA this week is 280 new questions for Wits & Wagers for 320 points, which is not nearly as exciting as Soulcalibur but certainly has its charm.
This week on Arcade: SOULCALIBUR and Wits & Wagers DLC [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]
The latest issue of Famitsu has more news on Soul Calibur IV. Nothing on Star Wars or disappearing clothes here, though, this stuff’s technical: the game will feature tag-team action. Yup, in the good old-fashioned Marvel v Capcom style. Well, almost. It’s supposedly not quite as extensive – it’s suggested that team-mates are used only for stuff like combos, not full-blooded, mid-battle tap-outs. There’s also only mention of it being available in singleplayer, but still. A Vader-Kratos one-two punch? What a weird and wonderful world we live in.
It’s been almost nine years since I first played the Dreamcast port of Soul Calibur which, at the time, seemed like the pinnacle of fighting game visuals. Another instance of my gaming career where I genuinely thought “This is it. They’ve done it. It can’t possibly get any better”. This was, of course, before the engineers at Namco Bandai dedicated man hours and processing power to ass-jiggle physics; before we really knew how detailed a cod piece could be. Anyway, the compressed Soul Calibur for Xbox 360 seems like a fun diversion, but I’ve still got my Dreamcast hooked up to Input 3 on my television. And Soulcalibur IV is out, like, any day now. Kinda makes the whole thing seem moot.
Soul Calibur Gameplay HD [GameTrailers]
Here, we go! Have a gander at Darth Vader’s secret apprentice in action in this new Star Wars game trailer. Though, we’re slightly confused why there are all those characters from Soul Calibur in it. What gives?