Bandai Namco celebrates two decades of the fighting game series. They released a trailer showing all the games released for the Soul Calibur series since 1998.
Soul Calibur is 20 years old
The original game was called Soul Edge in Japan (Soul Blade is the NA name). Because it was the central focus of the story. The second game introduced the Soul Calibur to the story. So we guess the developers changed the name to signify it’s importance to the story, and it just sort of stuck with the series.
The main reason for the name change was because of a man named Tim Langdell who founded a company called Edge Games. And then he went around suing anyone and everyone who used the word “edge” in association with video games. That’s why the first game was renamed Soul Blade outside of Japan and then the sequels called Soul Calibur.
Langdell kept this up for a long time until he tried to sue EA over Mirror’s Edge. This got countersued and got Langdell’s trademarks revoked by the US Trademark Office.
Soul Calibur V was so lacking in game content it wasn’t even funny. No arcade ending, art, reason for fighting, etc. That and they got (one of the best game) guest characters, Ezio in the game. And they pretty much didn’t do anything special with him.
This release is probably a way for them to test the waters for a new entry. Street Fighter V didn’t do so hot so they probably want to see who’s going to buy and how many are going to buy. The next one could be a full price, retail game or a low price base game and you buy everything that you want.