I remember Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast like it was yesterday. The first truly then-next-gen game that my friends and I played, it represented an absolutely amazing graphical extravaganza, not to mention an exciting evolution of the fighting genre into “proper” 3D.

“It actually looks real,” is always the battle cry of some of my gamer friends upon the latest and greatest graphical revolution, and with Soul Calibur’s amazingly lifelike animation (I was, for example, convinced that I could actually see the muscles tensing in the characters’ joints) it seemed like we were a step closer to that.

Then there were the many long nights spent with other friends drinking wine, eating cheese and playing far too much of the game – to the extent that my buddy Ben managed to complete the game in 18 seconds with Astaroth. Excited by this amazing victory, he sent a frantic text message to me – “18 seconds with Astaroth. Suck my cock and worship.”

Unfortunately, this text message never arrived. To this day, we’re unsure who it actually ended up with, but it certainly wasn’t me.

So now Soul Calibur IV is on the way, and it’s looking interesting, particularly with the character creation options. Character creation is a sure-fire path to brilliance if done well, and the trailer linked to below shows that there’s going to be some huge potential for fun, particularly when you combine it with the online play.

All I want when it comes to character creation is, frankly, either the City of Heroes character creation tool, or the WWF Smackdown 2 (PS1) character editor with next-gen graphics (and gameplay that’s actually GOOD). Why Smackdown 2? Well, because it’s the only game to this date to successfully allow us to create exact replicas of ourselves. And I mean EXACT.

Anyway. Here’s some Soul Calibur IV action to damp your uglies.