Skip to main content

Four in February #1 - Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein [DC]


The first game I completed of my Four in February was Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein. This is a fighting game by Capcom that was released in 2000 for the Sega Dreamcast in North America and 1999 in Japan. The game was first released in 1998 in arcades across the world. It's a sequel to Capcom's earlier Star Gladiator - Episode 1: Final Crusade, Capcom's first in-house 3D fighter. I had wanted to play Plasma Sword for a long time, since I had Star Gladiator but not a Dreamcast as a kid. It was the allure of the odd that drove me to it; Star Gladiator was such an unknown game in my friend group, and I had never even seen the sequel.


 
The cover art to Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein is pretty great. There's the hero, Hayato, a colorful bubble, some designs of circuitry or windows in a spacecraft, and a huge title. The colors really make it look like a Dreamcast game, that vapory millennium orange and pink. The Japanese cover shows the whole image that Hayato has been clipped from, a shot of the cast amidst the stars. It resembles a Star Wars poster, and, from what I understand, this series was slated to originally be a fighting game about Jedi and other force users (I mean it still has tons of similarities too), so this seems fitting. Europeans got a weird blue cover with the cast all around. I don't think it lives up to the other two.


Graphically, Plasma Sword is a pretty nice-looking game. Bright colors and flashy effects abound across the well-animated characters. Unlike the first game, backgrounds continue out into infinity. The characters from the first game appear here along with clones for each. The designs are all pretty cool and weird, though some of these clone characters are way too similar. It's not like having clones in a fighting game is unheard of, though.


Sound follows suit in terms of high-quality compositions and sound effects. The music is a bit more rock/metal than the more grandiose epics of Star Gladiator. It's a bit more what you might expect from a one-on-one fighter. The sound effects include a lot of voice samples that help bring the characters to life with all of the slashing space swords and laser effects.


Plasma Sword is a game about slashing space swords; each character has some type of weapon, from your standard beam saber to axes, scythes, yo-yos, and huge disks. The game combines Street Fighter inputs with a 3D fighter combo system. It's a bit like Street Fighter EX, and I am sure that isn't too surprising. Characters have a super meter to fill up can execute big specials with it. They can also create a small area that the opponent cannot escape from to try to execute heavy damage on to them.


The main arcade mode is your standard fight against a number of opponents with a rival match in the middle and a boss at the end. If you do a good job during the normal eight matches of the arcade mode, you might get to fight a strong, final opponent and possibly get a better ending. Otherwise, the game has your standard training, versus, and team battle modes to enjoy as well.

I had fun playing Plasma Sword, and I will definitely play more again in the future, hopefully against other people. It's a fast and weird game, and it represents the Dreamcast well with. I wish there were maybe a few more modes, less clones, and music that sounded as good as Star Gladiator, but Plasma Sword is pretty good otherwise.


Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein receives a Good (8).

Follow EfreetEater on Facebook

Labels:
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Convention Dimension: 3 Rivers Comicon

DISCLAIMER: I received a press pass to attend this event. The opinions here are still mine. Also, please consider reading this brief article about my various illnesses and such over the last several months. This article is very late, but things have been difficult. Originally, I had also planned to publish these pfotos to Instagram, again, in a more timely manner. Here we are though! At the beginning of June, I attended 3 Rivers Comicon at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh. I was surprised to see this event at the convention center, as I couldn't recall seeing it advertised in years past (I later heard that it was held at the Century III and Waterfront Malls in previous years). American comic book stuff is really not a huge thing on my radar, so it's not a surprise that I missed out on the earlier events. My friend Tyler wanted to check out this convention, so I decided to check it out as well. Anyway, 3 Rivers Comicon is held by local chain New Di...
Post a Comment
Read more

PlayStation Basement #92 - Runabout 2

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on May 30th, 2020. Another week, another PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go! Today we return to the world of  Runabout  (or  Felony 11-79 ) with  Runabout 2 . This game was released on November 18th, 1999 in Japan and May 19th, 2000 in North America making the 20th anniversary just eleven days ago. It was also published in Europe in February of 2003 and was re-released as a budget title in Japan in November of 2000. Like the first game, this title stars an expert agent who operates via vehicle to steal or retrieve treasures. This game, his motives seem more just compared with thefts he committed for a greedy individual in the first title. This game also has its share of supernatural conspi...
Post a Comment
Read more

PlayStation Basement #95 - Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on June 20th, 2020. Another week, another PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go! So summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, and what better way to start this season than with a fighting game? Today’s game is SNK’s attempt at a 3D fighter: Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition . Originally released to the arcade on January 28th, 1999, the game followed on Japanese and North American PlayStation consoles on June 24th and November 30th, respectively. In what seems to be SNK’s attempt at mimicking their rival Capcom’s Street Fighter EX , Wild Ambition re-tells the first Fatal Fury game with some of the mainstay characters from later games such as Mai Shiranui and Mr. Karate except this time they’re all...
Post a Comment
Read more