Soul Blade is a PlayStation port of Namco's weapon-based 3D fighting game originally known as Soul Edge. As with other Namco games from the same period (such as Tekken and Tekken 2), the arcade game ran on the PlayStation-based System 11 board, allowing for a pretty close console conversion while adding a plethora of new content (such as interactive real-time endings, exclusive costumes, three soundtrack choices and the Edge Master mode). The reason for the title change, at least for the American and European versions (it was still called Soul Edge in Japan), was due to notorious trademark troll Tim Langdell, who attempted to claim exclusive ownership of the word "Edge". If you ever wondered why the sequels to Soul Edge went with a completely different title, you got good old Tim to blame for that.

To do: Rip the game's music and see if the unused tracks appear on-disc, or if they're exclusively textual references.

Provisionary Name

Opening SOUL.BNS in a hex editor reveals a reference to "Legend of Evil Sword", immensely strange seeing as the title seems to have been translated very literally from Japanese, but isn't even the game's Japanese title (Soul Edge, the name of the "evil sword" that the cast is searching for).

The title may have been a placeholder during the game's development prior to its arcade release, and fittingly appears at the very top of the assorted code when viewed in a hex editor, suggesting that it is a very early leftover.

Developer Credit

Also present in SOUL.BNS is a brief credit to the subsidiary branch of Namco which presumably developed the game:

S O U L B L A D E

for Playstation

Copyright 1996 Namco LTD. 

all rights reserved.

Developed by namco VS R&D dept.

Here is how the text looks like in the Japanese version:

Legend of Evil Sword

____________________

  S O U L  E D G E  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   for PlayStation



Copyright 1996 namco LTD.

  all rights reserved.



Developed by namco VS R&D dept.

Internal Track Listing

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

SOUL.SYS contains a very comprehensive and convenient track list, which details not merely the name of each track and its intended purpose, but also indicates unused tracks! Three entries in particular are labelled as unused on this list:

At The End of One's Journey (UNUSED)

The Gift of Victory (UNUSED)

A Close Game Lost (UNUSED)

These tracks can be heard in the Options mode, through the BGM settings. They're available on every soundtrack (the game lets you listen to the Original and Arranged versions of tracks, as well as the Khan Super Session soundtrack), and don't have different versions.

Unused Audio

A small selection of unused audio clips can be found on the disc, pertaining to individual character endings in Arcade mode.

Rock

Four voice files for Bangoo are present on the disc, despite being intended for an entirely unused scenario! They appear to have been planned for an early incarnation of Rock's bad ending, where Rock decides to tell Bangoo personally that he is going on a journey to search for his lost parents. Strangely, no corresponding clips for Rock are present on the disc, and it is unknown how exactly Rock would have replied to Bangoo's questions (if he chose to reply at all).

The scenario appears to have been changed (and these voice clips removed) to more clearly indicate a "bad" ending and invoke guilt for Rock abandoning Bangoo, as in the game itself Rock's bad ending shows his adopted son stranded on an island crying out for Rock, a consequence of the latter's selfish quest for self-fulfillment.

Sophitia

A voice file intended for Sophitia's ending. Her dialogue sounds stilted and rather awkwardly strung together, almost as if they were separate recordings that were forcefully merged into a single file, although it's difficult to tell whether that is due to the poor voice-acting quality or the composition of the file. It was likely removed due to redundancy.

"Unused" Characters

As a consequence of how the character model data is all stored together, a number of characters who normally only appear in ending cinematics can actually be accessed as playable characters with the help of cheat codes. However, none of them display normally in-battle, using a seemingly random assortment of character pieces, as none of them were ever intended to be playable and the few anomalies within this list were likely used during testing. Most of these characters don't have voices.

The names used are what the characters in question are referred to as in the code:

Regional Differences

• The title of the game was changed from Soul Edge to Soul Blade outside Japan due to the aforementioned trademark dispute over the use of the word "Edge".


• In the Japanese and American versions, Li Long uses nunchaku. The European version changed his weapon to a three-sectioned staff, due to the BBFC guidelines which were in place at the time banning the depiction of certain weapons such as nunchaku.


• The intro was also edited for the American/European versions to remove some nudity from it.


• Several lines of dialogue were also re-recorded into English for the American version. This mainly affects Siegfried and Cervantes.