''Soul Fighter'' is a 3D

beat 'em up The beat 'em up (also known as brawler and, in some markets, beat 'em all) is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) levels ...

video game developed by Toka and published by TLC Multimedia for the

Sega Dreamcast The is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998, in Japan; September 9, 1999, in North America; and October 14, 1999, in Europe. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, N ...

in 1999.

Gameplay

The gameplay centers around martial art styles of combat and using a small selection of weapons.

Plot

An evil spell of Queen Antea has fallen on the Kingdom of Gomar. As a mysterious mist envelops the kingdom, the inhabitants turn into vicious creatures. A fearless warrior (Atlus), a female spy (Sayomi), and a powerful wizard (Orion) have escaped the fate of their fellow villagers. They must now search for and capture souls in order to reverse the curse.

Development

''Soul Fighter'' was developed by the French company Toka with help from upstart company Piggyback Interactive. The 15-person team at Toka created the game using the

3dfx Interactive 3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the ...

Glide API Glide is a 3D graphics API developed by 3dfx Interactive for their ''Voodoo Graphics'' 3D accelerator cards. Although it originally started as a proprietary API, it was later open sourced by 3dfx. It was dedicated to rendering performance, supp ...

for PC hardware in the same fashion as

Midway Games Midway Games Inc., known previously as Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known as simply Midway, was an American video game developer and publisher. Midway's franchises included '' Mortal Kombat'', ''Rampage'', '' Spy Hunter'' ...

' '' San Francisco Rush'', ''

NFL Blitz ''NFL Blitz'' is a series of American football themed video games originally released by Midway featuring National Football League (NFL) teams. It began as a 1997 arcade game '' NFL Blitz'' that was ported to home consoles and spawned a series o ...

'', and ''

NBA Showtime ''NBA Showtime'' is the pregame show aired before each ''NBA on NBC'' telecast. The program, a half-hour in length, began during the 1990–91 NBA season, and was initially hosted by Bob Costas. Costas left in the mid-1990s, and became lead play-b ...

''. Although ''Soul Fighter'' cannot be run with Glide on the Dreamcast, the software allowed Toka to port the game from the PC to console in less than three weeks. Production on ''Soul Fighter'' was originally set to be finished in July 1999 with the game slated for release at the North American launch of the Dreamcast. A delay set its release back to an October ship date. After settling on a publisher in Mindscape, ''Soul Fighter'' was delayed again from an October 1999 release to the following month. Piggyback consulted with a Japanese publisher at one point to transform ''Soul Fighter'' into an arcade game; the company had also considered a version for the PlayStation 2. A planned port of the game for the

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the W ...

was announced but eventually cancelled.

Reception

''Soul Fighter'' received unfavorable reviews according to the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

GameRankings GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...

. Blake Fischer of '' NextGen'' called it the first spinning-world simulator to run at a 60fps.

References

External links

* {{Toka (company) 1999 video games Beat 'em ups Cancelled GameCube games Dreamcast games Dreamcast-only games The Learning Company games Mindscape games Red Orb Entertainment games Single-player video games Video games developed in France Video games featuring female protagonists Toka (company) games