3RRDC Plasma Sword

Capcom was one of Dreamcast's biggest 3rd party helpers. Pumping up
arcade ports left and right, one of them turned out to be the sequel to
Star gladiator, which you can find available for the ps1. But is Plasma
Sword something that should have been brought to the dreamcast, or
should it have stayed in the arcades? Is any support good support? Or
does capcom need to get their act together and have stricter quality
control? Whatever you think, I'm sure Plasma Sowrd will confirm your
views on the subject. So let's check out the world of "Plasma Sword:
The nightmare or Bilstein".

Plasma Sword takes place a year after the events of the first game.
The game is set in the far flung future and features a cast of strange
aliens and humans. The evil Billsten had supposedly died in the first
game and now the future was peaceful again. But now there are
rumors spreading�rumors of people seeing Bilstein's ghost!? So troops
are sent in to find out what's going on but they are all killed, but how is
unknown. So uncover the mystery of Bilstein and put a stop to this
madman, alive or dead. Story wise is ok. Having the final boss come
back from the last game as a ghost is a little cheesy. And Bilstein? The
name alone should remind many of "goosebumps" writer R.L.Stein.
Probably one of the weirdest boss names (since Huggy bear in toy
commander).

Which brings me into character selection. Well they are different and
very sci-fi. I'm sure a lot of people will recognize the main character
Hayato, who was playable in 2d form in marvel vs. capcom 2 (which by
the way is a much better game). To start off you get 22 characters, an
ok size. But, every character has a double of sorts that plays
extremely similar. For Hayato there is "Black Hayato", who looks
different but controls just the same. Visually, or at least in the
drawings�this looks kinda cool, but your really only playing as a mirror
version of the character. Some of the characters are kinda cool like
June, a girl who throws rings, hey kinda like her counterpart Ele. Some
characters like Gantetsu and Shaker are extremely boring, and the
graphics don't help. More on those later.

This is a button masher plain and simple. It is also a weapons fighter,
charcters have swords, rings, guns, axes, and staffs, You get vertical
and horizontal slashes, as well as a standard kick. There are 4 types of
special moves, plasma revenge, plasma reflect, plasma field, and
plasma strike. Each character gets a hand full of their own unique
moves but so does their double. You can also sidestep to avoid
attacks. The action is fast and kinda fun but overall kind of bland
(more blandness coming soon I promise). The modes include Arcade,
versus, group battle, and training. The artwork for the game is very
good. I really would have liked to see an art gallery somewhere on the
gd-rom but alas it was not meant to be.

The graphics don't do the dreamcast any justice. Sure they look better
than the first game, but I think this game could have been done on the
n64. Characters aren't very detailed, blocky, and dull looking. Most of
them are colors of browns and greys, with a few exceptions. Their
faces tend to lack any emotions and they are painful to look at when
they do their ending taunts when they win a match. The backgrounds
are 2d drawings that are equally dull. Wait till you get to the sand level.
For the most part I really hate capcom's 3d fighters (with the power
stones and project justice as two notable exceptions). Maybe if you're
a hardcore star gladiator fan, you might be ok with the graphics. I
really only play this game now every once and a while just to play an
easy and flashy button masher. The artwork for the characters is all
very nice though. Too bad their 3d counterparts are quite ugly. Sorry
Hayato but you looked better in 2d my man.

The music and sound was nothing memorable. If I recall just
techno/rock "mush" for the music. While there wasn't anything wrong
with the music and I didn't find it to be bad, I can't really remember it.
Music can sometimes be a very memorable part of a fighting game.
Look at Soul Calibur's epic score, or King of fighters dream match '99's
jazzy tone. If you wanna do high octane powerful tracks, the original
Marvel vs. capcom did that right. Here the music is just there. I don't
think there were voices in cut scenes, but characters do have to
scream their attacks and say something when they win. Again nothing
wrong but nothing noteworthy.

With a decent size of characters, you'll play through to see their short
endings. Some are kinda interesting and some are boring. I believe Ryu
from street fighter makes a cameo appearance in Gantetsu's ending.
He was sitting in a bar. There are also 3 unlockable characters. 1 of
them is just an evil version of an already existing one. But with all of
it's blandness you shouldn't be playing this one very often.

And that is unfortunate. It had a cool sci-fi feel to it, and some unique
characters to go along with it. But it is pulled off with little style.
Instead you get a boring bargain bin fighter with some good ideas, just
ones covered in mud. I'd recommend it if you can get it cheap (I bought
my copy new for 10 bucks), or if you must get all the capcom games on
dreamcast. But c'mon, the dreamcast is home to so many great
fighters so you can do better than this (then again so could capcom).

Review by: Orochi Sonic