On Thursday, June 30th we hosted our 12th tournament: Soul Calibur. Many of us remember first playing this weapon-based Dreamcast launch game in the summer of 1998 when it was first revealed. At the time, the vivid 3D graphics and incredible environmental and character variation was striking. We played Soul Calibur through an emulator with two Xbox 360 controllers, mapped to best reproduce the control layout of the Sega Dreamcast.
The tournament style was double elimination, and this was a tough one. As we got to later stages of the tournament contestants started parrying and throwing a lot, as matches became increasingly calculative and button-mashing attempts were quickly thwarted. The most popular character by far was the bow staff-wielding Kilik, whom Namco developers modeled after popular Chinese mythological character The Monkey King.
In the final stages of the tournament, and undefeated Charlie playing as Kilik faced off against Dan playing as Tekken crossover character Yoshimitsu. Having two chances to defeat Dan, Charlie couldn’t pull it off and Dan emerged the winner.
Emulation of Soul Calibur was flawless, with the game running at full speed and looking fantastic. If you haven’t played this game recently, Soul Calibur is one that holds up extremely well. It barely feels like 18 have passed at all.
Tournament Brackets
There were eight competitors in our Soul Calibur tournament, divided into winners and losers brackets.
Dan came back from the loser’s bracket to win with Yoshimitsu.
