When my brother showed me the trailer for the upcoming Soul Calibur game a couple of weeks ago, I nearly crapped my pants at how cool Darth Vader and Yoda looked. I honestly thought it was a great idea as Star Wars provides a relatively untapped source of characters that could be used in fighting games (we've all forgotten about Masters of Teras Kasi I hope). However after doing some more digging, I found that there were a significant amount of bloggers, forum members, and youtube commenters, that thought that the inclusion of the latest guest characters is a bad idea. Their reasoning ranged from the simple, "I think it's stupid" to the uber-nerdy "Well it doesn't make sense. The blade of the lightsaber would cut through any weapon." (in which i respond by saying "not if their weapons are made of Cortosis, dipshit...yea, i'll let you readers go look that one up on your own). Then i heard the anurism-causing, "Well Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Let's not overanalyze, shall we? Darth Vader is in the game and it's cool. That's it. There's no need for deep plot or reasoning in fighting games anyway...Relax.

Here's the bottom line, not that I matter at all, but I had never even heard of Soul Calibur until 2 came out with its special guest characters for each console (Spawn for X-Box, Link for Gamecube, and Heihachi for Playstation2), and I don't think I was the only one. The inclusion of these guest characters was a brilliant move because it not only was cool for the gamers, but was a brilliant piece of marketing for the company who created the game and for each console itself. Think about it; how many people bought that game only because of the guest characters? I would wager that one-quarter to one-third of the sales occured for that reason alone. My theory is this (and again, my opinion is meaningless) but if there are no guest characters, Soul Calibur is just another fighting game that isn't Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 2: Super Championship Turbo Extreme Maximum Ultimate Edition. Also think about actually how many times you saw Soul Calibur 2 commercials on tv (a lot) and compare that to how many times you saw commercials for Soul Calibur 3 (from what I understand had no guest characters...or at least no popular ones) on tv (not once for me).

So Soul Calibur is including guest characters again for its 4th edition and this time using two characters that are more iconic than Link, Spawn, and Heihachi combined. My brother, who's a PS3 owner, admitted that there was probably no chance that he would buy this game if Vader wasn't in it (he's still bitter about Heihachi on PS2...GAUNTLETS ARE NOT WEAPONS!!!), but he most definitely will buy it now. I'm sure he's not alone in that thought. Just remember how cool the Marvel vs. Capcom and all the related games in that franchise were. Crossovers are cool, especially in video games. I only hope Vader gets to use Mace Windu's PimpSaber as one of his unlockable weapons.

Live Long and Prosper....wait....,
-Mike