Soul Blade

Soul Blade is a PS1 port of the arcade-bound fighter Soul Edge, updated for the console. It is the first game of the illustrious Soul Calibur series, but is noticeably more obscure than its successors to the extent that many fans are unaware of its existence. It also differs quite heavily in gameplay, as weapons had their own strength gauges and could eventually break if they sustained too much damage!

Provisionary Name
Opening SOUL.BNS in a hex editor reveals a reference to "Legend of Evil Sword", immensely strange seeing as the title seems to have been translated very literally from Japanese, but isn't even the game's Japanese name (Soul Edge, the name of the "evil sword" that the cast is searching for).

The title may have been a placeholder during the game's development prior to its arcade release, and fittingly appears at the very top of the assorted code when viewed in a hex editor, suggesting that it is a very early leftover.

Developer Credit
Also present in SOUL.BNS is a brief credit to the subsidiary branch of Namco which presumably developed the game: S O U L B L A D E for Playstation Copyright 1996 Namco LTD. all rights reserved. Developed by namco VS R&D dept.

Here is how the text looks like in the Japanese version: Legend of Evil Sword ____________________ S O U L  E D G E

for PlayStation

Copyright 1996 namco LTD. all rights reserved.

Developed by namco VS R&D dept.

Internal Track Listing
SOUL.SYS contains a very comprehensive and convenient track list, which details not merely the name of each track and its intended purpose, but also indicates unused tracks! Three entries in particular are labelled as unused on this list: At The End of One's Journey (UNUSED) The Gift of Victory (UNUSED) A Close Game Lost (UNUSED)

These tracks can be heard in the Options mode, through the BGM settings. They're part of the Khan Super Session soundtrack.

Unused Audio
A small selection of unused audio clips can be found on the disc, pertaining to individual character endings in Arcade mode.

Rock








Four voice files for Bangoo are present on the disc, despite being intended for an entirely unused scenario! They appear to have been planned for an early incarnation of Rock's bad ending, where Rock decides to tell Bangoo personally that he is going on a journey to search for his lost parents. Strangely, no corresponding clips for Rock are present on the disc, and it is unknown how exactly Rock would have replied to Bangoo's questions (if he chose to reply at all).

The scenario appears to have been changed (and these voice clips removed) to more clearly indicate a "bad" ending and invoke guilt for Rock abandoning Bangoo, as in the game itself Rock's bad ending shows his adopted son stranded on an island crying out for Rock, a consequence of the latter's selfish quest for self-fulfillment.

Sophitia


A voice file intended for Sophitia's ending. Her dialogue sounds stilted and rather awkwardly strung together, almost as if they were separate recordings that were forcefully merged into a single file, although it's difficult to tell whether that is due to the poor voice-acting quality or the composition of the file. It was likely removed due to redundancy.

"Unused" Characters
As a consequence of how the character model data is all stored together, a number of characters who normally only appear in ending cinematics can actually be accessed as playable characters with the help of cheat codes. However, none of them display normally in-battle, using a seemingly random assortment of character pieces, as none of them were ever intended to be playable and the few anomalies within this list were likely used during testing.

The names used are what the characters in question are referred to as in the code: