MrAngryFace
Banned
TO SHINE!
MAF's Soul Edge Intro Appreciation Thread
- Thread starter MrAngryFace
- Start date
Drinky Crow
Banned
Man, I shat my pants when I first saw that intro. Hell, I was 23 years old and KNEW BETTER, and I still shat my pants.
MrAngryFace
Banned
I loved the cheesy buttrock song most of all, the intro was so well directed and it hit all the right moments during the music. I WAS ALL FIRED UP TO SLICE AND KILL!
The game ruled too.
The game ruled too.
Patrick Klepek
furiously molesting tim burton
i fondly remember MAF and eXxy slicin' and dicin' in Soul Edge at 2am in the morning many a time
The opening and Khan's remixes were my favorite part of the game. Though i always liked (and still do) Sega's fighters more, i really loved the extra care Namco took in making the PS versions of their games shine. i primarily bought Soul Edge and Tekken 3 to gawk at the visuals and rock to the music.
You guys owe it to yourselves to pick up the soundtrack. After nearly a decade of owning the MP3s, i finally picked it up. Hearing "Edge of Soul", "Hagakure", "Yellow Sands", and "Castaway in Darkness" in CD sound nearly brought a tear to my eye.
You guys owe it to yourselves to pick up the soundtrack. After nearly a decade of owning the MP3s, i finally picked it up. Hearing "Edge of Soul", "Hagakure", "Yellow Sands", and "Castaway in Darkness" in CD sound nearly brought a tear to my eye.
MrAngryFace
Banned
exxy: Thats how I waited for the dreamcast launch haha. So sad.
Drinky Crow
Banned
My wife hates BRAVELY FOLK SONG. 
Yeah I think its nostalgia at work here. I never did see the intro in its native form on the PSone. However, I did hear about how fantastic it was so I managed to download it some years back. Back then, I thought it was ok.
Well, I just dug up the file and had another go at it. And honestly, it was pretty mediocre. FFVIII's intro was way more impressive.
Oh, and its kinda amazing when you consider the fact that SC2's ingame graphics are of higher quality than that found in the FMV intro of Soul Edge.
Well, I just dug up the file and had another go at it. And honestly, it was pretty mediocre. FFVIII's intro was way more impressive.
Oh, and its kinda amazing when you consider the fact that SC2's ingame graphics are of higher quality than that found in the FMV intro of Soul Edge.
MrAngryFace
Banned
SC II's intro is very good, almost as good as Soul Edge's, however both trounce the 'create an intro' for the first SC.
Crazymoogle
Member
evil ways said:
I hear that. Not only is Li Long >>>> Maxi, the whole Soul Edge weapon mode >>>>> SC1 or SC2's implementations. All of the weapons were varied (even at the cost of game balance), which just made the whole system more interesting. Hwang's 2 meter invisible sword, Mitsurugi's 'Block killer'; even Li Long had some nasty poison tipped, bladed nunchucks.
No, it's just very well-choreographed. The video matched the pacing of the music quite well, and the quality of CG, from the scenes to animation, was just very well done. Sigfried taking one last look as his village is destroyed, the battle (and short kata display) of Mitsurugi and Hwang, and the beautiful break in the action as the ladies stut their stuff midway through the intro are the points that immediately come to my mind. Resolution and compression aside, i'm sure many gamers would agree it still stands today as one of the best. IIRC, a high-res version was shown at SIGGRAPH.ElyrionX said:
SiegfriedFM
Member
I just watched it twice and yes, it still holds up. The direction is just perfect. Also, the quality of some models (Mitsurugi in particular) is still comparable to modern CG. I mean, just look at the closeup in the sunset!
That first picture seems way more high res than the actual intro (everything reddish is heavily artifacted)... is that from the Siggraph demo? I'd love to have a DVD quality version of this intro...
For some reason, even though the SC2 into has way more detailed characters in general, and in most cases better costume design than SB, they just don't look as alive in the intro.
That first picture seems way more high res than the actual intro (everything reddish is heavily artifacted)... is that from the Siggraph demo? I'd love to have a DVD quality version of this intro...
For some reason, even though the SC2 into has way more detailed characters in general, and in most cases better costume design than SB, they just don't look as alive in the intro.
SiegfriedFM
Member
I watched the intro again, and then SC1 and SC2 in a row. Yes, it certainly beats these two.
SC1 has quite good music, but the loading times really take away from the action. Also, since the scenes are interchangeable, it doesn't really flow with the music as SE's. Only places it does is with Kilik's last strike and the two sets of three pictures. Also, some of the default scenes are very boring and ugly.
SC2 has horrible music. It's like someone first made the intro and then put together music to go along with it, as opposed to the rock video approach of SE. Nothing ever syncs with the music (and we get flamenco with Raphael, oh yay) and the fight scenes seem dragged out and boring. Only real highlights are towards the end with Mitsurugi's charge (almost as good as SE's) and Nightmare, although it ends with a whole lot of flames for a couple of seconds and then the completely inappropriate sci-fi logo morph, where it could have used quick shots of the characters or something to maintain speed to the end.
Whoever edited the SE intro certainly doesn't work at Namco anymore. And hopefully neither does the SC2 editor...
SC1 has quite good music, but the loading times really take away from the action. Also, since the scenes are interchangeable, it doesn't really flow with the music as SE's. Only places it does is with Kilik's last strike and the two sets of three pictures. Also, some of the default scenes are very boring and ugly.
SC2 has horrible music. It's like someone first made the intro and then put together music to go along with it, as opposed to the rock video approach of SE. Nothing ever syncs with the music (and we get flamenco with Raphael, oh yay) and the fight scenes seem dragged out and boring. Only real highlights are towards the end with Mitsurugi's charge (almost as good as SE's) and Nightmare, although it ends with a whole lot of flames for a couple of seconds and then the completely inappropriate sci-fi logo morph, where it could have used quick shots of the characters or something to maintain speed to the end.
Whoever edited the SE intro certainly doesn't work at Namco anymore. And hopefully neither does the SC2 editor...
FortNinety
Member
Funny, for whatever reason, I decided to play the game for the first time in years this weekend. And yes, there's no nostalgia speaking here: the intro still fucking rocks.
Anyone got an mp3 handy? I always wanted one.
Oh, and +1000 points for MAF for calling it Soul Edge instead of the lame ass Soul Blade label it got in the states. At least they still referred to the weapon by its proper name in the Soul Calibur games.
Anyone got an mp3 handy? I always wanted one.
Oh, and +1000 points for MAF for calling it Soul Edge instead of the lame ass Soul Blade label it got in the states. At least they still referred to the weapon by its proper name in the Soul Calibur games.
Warm Machine
Member
Every non Japanese loving casual who I showed that intro to hated that song
I gotta disagree with you Siegfred. I found most of the scenes in Soul Edge intro to be extremely generic and most of them barely related to the game itself.
Mitsu's bamboo field fight was extremely generic samurai material as was Li Long's HK movie ripoff restaurant fight and Taki's typical anime demon hunter sequence. None of these were particularly well coreographed either. Rock's 'Big man loves little kid' schtick wasn't exactly the most original thing ever as well. I found the little 'now here's the womens' segment in the middle almost embarassing actually.
All of the katas shown were kinda dull, the little flashes of Seigfred vs Taki and Hwang vs Mitsu were not very impressive (except for the blades clashing closeup of Mitsu and Hwang but that was less than half a second long) and Cervantes got barely any push as the villian of the piece.
And I really really did not like the music. I mean the instrumentation was good, and I didn't particularly mind the shouting chorus TO SHINE, TO GROW, but the lead vocalist was just not to my taste at all.
As for the Soul Calibur II intro. For one thing it looks much better but that's a given. However it treated the backstories of the characters with much more subtletly and grace then Soul Edge did (there was more of it to work with to be sure, but still SCII was superior). Because the SCII CG characters were actually capable of conveying a much greater range of emotion and that counts for a lot in my book. Cassandra's determination, and Yunsung's rebelliousness got across much better in the SCII intro then Sophitia's porcelian doll shock and Seigfred's cheesy smirk in SE. The quck flashes of Kilik, Xianghua, and Maxi was great at getting across the connection of those three characters.
Moving on the music, man for me there's no competition. SE was cheesy J-Rockish stuff, SCII was epic orchestra, much better fit to my mind. And I think the correlation between the music and the visuals was actually very well done. The music started builidng up when the raven first showed up and started really rocking with the first fight scene. The transition to and from spanish guitar for Raphael was really well done and didn't feel thrown in at all, which is pretty amazing to my mind considering the difference from the main theme. The music then came in hard with the more action packed part of the intro, kept on building through the fight scenes to Misturigi's amazing sequence hit a climax with Mistu's triumph, and then started building up again through Nightmare, and had a great final payoff with Inferno and the logo.
Frankly Ivy Vs Taki, and Maxi vs Astaroth completely put Seigfred Vs Taki and Hwang vs Mistu to shame just in terms of fight coreography and in terms of connection to music, the music always came in strong with the fights, and in the second Ivy vs Taki bit the music went from European to Asian influence as the flow of the fight went from Ivy to Taki. The initial shot of Maxi getting thrown through a wall by Astaroth and hitting the second was great and the transition from that fight to the second Ivy Vs Taki bit was pure directoral genius for me. Nightmare and Inferno got much better build up than Cervantes did and Mitsu SCII completely destroys Mitus SE in terms of sheer badassness. And hell Mitsu's sequence in SCII did much more to allude to his obsession with defeating firearms through sword play whereas in SE all you could tell was 'he's a samurai'.
Plus SCII had the 'soul still burns' narrator dude. That guy kicks ass.
It's not that I think the SE intro is bad, I think it's great for it's time and still has a few scenes that hold up. But I was blown away by the SCII intro the first time I saw it and I think nostalgia for SE keeps SCII from getting the praise it deserves perhaps.
Mitsu's bamboo field fight was extremely generic samurai material as was Li Long's HK movie ripoff restaurant fight and Taki's typical anime demon hunter sequence. None of these were particularly well coreographed either. Rock's 'Big man loves little kid' schtick wasn't exactly the most original thing ever as well. I found the little 'now here's the womens' segment in the middle almost embarassing actually.
All of the katas shown were kinda dull, the little flashes of Seigfred vs Taki and Hwang vs Mitsu were not very impressive (except for the blades clashing closeup of Mitsu and Hwang but that was less than half a second long) and Cervantes got barely any push as the villian of the piece.
And I really really did not like the music. I mean the instrumentation was good, and I didn't particularly mind the shouting chorus TO SHINE, TO GROW, but the lead vocalist was just not to my taste at all.
As for the Soul Calibur II intro. For one thing it looks much better but that's a given. However it treated the backstories of the characters with much more subtletly and grace then Soul Edge did (there was more of it to work with to be sure, but still SCII was superior). Because the SCII CG characters were actually capable of conveying a much greater range of emotion and that counts for a lot in my book. Cassandra's determination, and Yunsung's rebelliousness got across much better in the SCII intro then Sophitia's porcelian doll shock and Seigfred's cheesy smirk in SE. The quck flashes of Kilik, Xianghua, and Maxi was great at getting across the connection of those three characters.
Moving on the music, man for me there's no competition. SE was cheesy J-Rockish stuff, SCII was epic orchestra, much better fit to my mind. And I think the correlation between the music and the visuals was actually very well done. The music started builidng up when the raven first showed up and started really rocking with the first fight scene. The transition to and from spanish guitar for Raphael was really well done and didn't feel thrown in at all, which is pretty amazing to my mind considering the difference from the main theme. The music then came in hard with the more action packed part of the intro, kept on building through the fight scenes to Misturigi's amazing sequence hit a climax with Mistu's triumph, and then started building up again through Nightmare, and had a great final payoff with Inferno and the logo.
Frankly Ivy Vs Taki, and Maxi vs Astaroth completely put Seigfred Vs Taki and Hwang vs Mistu to shame just in terms of fight coreography and in terms of connection to music, the music always came in strong with the fights, and in the second Ivy vs Taki bit the music went from European to Asian influence as the flow of the fight went from Ivy to Taki. The initial shot of Maxi getting thrown through a wall by Astaroth and hitting the second was great and the transition from that fight to the second Ivy Vs Taki bit was pure directoral genius for me. Nightmare and Inferno got much better build up than Cervantes did and Mitsu SCII completely destroys Mitus SE in terms of sheer badassness. And hell Mitsu's sequence in SCII did much more to allude to his obsession with defeating firearms through sword play whereas in SE all you could tell was 'he's a samurai'.
Plus SCII had the 'soul still burns' narrator dude. That guy kicks ass.
It's not that I think the SE intro is bad, I think it's great for it's time and still has a few scenes that hold up. But I was blown away by the SCII intro the first time I saw it and I think nostalgia for SE keeps SCII from getting the praise it deserves perhaps.
MrAngryFace
Banned
Shut Up.
Baron Aloha
A Shining Example
Hell, yes. IAWTP. This is probably one of the top 3 intros of the 32-bit era IMO.
Baron Aloha
A Shining Example
AniHawk said:
I don't know. I had already moved on to the DC by the time CC came out and I never played it. I've never played Chrono Trigger either!
I have to think about what my other 2 would be. FFVII is probably one of them. I'm also tempted to say Tekken 2, which isn't anywhere near as good as Soul Blade's, but it is still pretty memorable. Top 5 maybe. Namco were some CG Gods in the PSX days... then they got lazy. I want my CG endings back Namco!!!
FortNinety
Member
AniHawk said:
Yeah, and the third has to be R4.
Namco's CG work, especially with Tekken 3 is simply unmatched. Some of it may "look" dated by today's standard's but it's still top notch.
ArcadeStickMonk
Member
That game and that song are 70% of what I remember about high school.
Soul Blade is entirely responsible for me buying a console and Soul Calibur could be considered responsible for my evolution into arcade stick play.
Chun-Li must share my heart with Taki
Soul Blade is entirely responsible for me buying a console and Soul Calibur could be considered responsible for my evolution into arcade stick play.
Chun-Li must share my heart with Taki
The Faceless Master
Member
all i gotta say is ...
as far as intros go ...
R4 > Tekken 2 > Soul Edge
that is the holy trinity of PSX game intros
as far as intros go ...
R4 > Tekken 2 > Soul Edge
that is the holy trinity of PSX game intros
When the first Japanese copy of Soul Edge/Blade arrived at my local import shop, I snapped it up and brought it work. The entire EA Canada Quality Assurance department found their way into my office at one time or another that day, watching the intro over and over and over again. The direction, the art, the music - oh LORD the music - absolutely perfect. I'd rate it slightly ahead of Tekken 2's CG intro, but frankly it's like arguing about sapphires vs rubies...we're all the richer for the experience.
And yes, it still stands up today. Incredible work.
And yes, it still stands up today. Incredible work.
Manick Joe
Member
Hell yes Soul Edge passes the test of time. In fact, that along with the previously mentioned PSX titles have had little to compete with for quite a long time. Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner I'd rank up there if it didn't spoil the entire game and the song was grating at times. Only competition I'd say is the genious Robot put forth for the Onimusha 3 Demon Siege intro. Good god, I usually boot up the game every week or so just to watch it in my home theater in surround sound.
ScientificNinja
Member
The Soul Edge intro rocked hard - a lot of PSone intros (and music) were all quite awesome around that time. Rage Racer, Tekken 3, Final Fantasy VIII (I still listen to the arranged music), Tenchu, Ghost In The Shell (*drool*), Final Fantasy Tactics... most of it sucks now. Or maybe I'm jaded beyond belief. I actually like the music in Capcom Vs SNK 2.
ScientificNinja
Member
There was nipple? I thought people were only upset by Sophitia's butt-crack. Closest thing to a nipple in that video are Taki's wobbling jubblies, methinks.
SiegfriedFM
Member
As for Cervantes, how else would they present him? At the beginning of SE, noone has ever met him, he's just the rumoured guy carrying those swords.
You could rather blame SC for not having any of the backstory (Li Long dying, Sophitia and Taki killing Cervantes, Siegfried turning into Nightmare) in its intro...
You could rather blame SC for not having any of the backstory (Li Long dying, Sophitia and Taki killing Cervantes, Siegfried turning into Nightmare) in its intro...
