"Welcome back to the stage of history!"
Soul Calibur is without question the best 3D fighting game ever created. It is the sequel to Soul Edge (Soul Blade in the West), but is light years ahead of its predecessor. It came from humble beginnings - Namco's original Soul Calibur coin-op was rushed and failed to gain even a fraction of the popularity of their Tekken series. However when it came to the conversion of the game to Sega's Dreamcast console in 1999, they added a huge amount of content and polished the graphics to an insane degree. The addition of a story mode and various other single player exercises allowed players to learn how the game mechanics worked.
Unlike any other arcade-originated 3D fighter, Soul Calibur allows and actively demands movement in more than one plane. You are able to sidestep and sprint around the arena instead of being tethered to an invisible line. Oh, and on top of that the collision detection is sensible (although the physics aren't always completely realistic), and moves can be chained together reasonably fluidly. And button mashing simply is not an option, as the game requires a degree of timing, in the same vein as Last Blade.
There are a wide range of characters (although some are Mortal Kombat-style filler, but nowhere near as lame as the old Sub Zero/Scorpion/Shadow/etc, etc... palette swapping nonsense) and each has a unique style based around a close combat weapon or weapons. There are characters to match every style, and enough of them to ensure that there is always something new to master. Some of the coolest characters are Mitsurugi, Kilik, Maxi, Siegfried, Ivy, Sophitia and Nightmare.
Although the game is now over two years old, and even though I never liked any other Namco fighting game (Tekken 3 never really grabbed me, being too obviously a hodge-podge of different ideas and in my opinion hopelessly limited), I love Soul Calibur. A number of my friends and I still play it at least once a week. If you have even a passing interest in fighting games, or competitive games of any kind, you owe it to yourself to buy a Dreamcast and a copy of this.
"The legend will never die!"
(Some info from Edge #104)