Before you laugh, hear me out.

Most people know Battle Arena Toshinden as one of the first (if not the first) 3D weapon-based fighting games. The game helped give shape to the original Playstation's launch and even became a pack-in title in the early going.

However, despite such backing by Sony, Battle Arena Toshinden's star would quickly burn out; the second game would be completely upstaged by the Namco's Tekken series due to its lack of basic fighting game features like combos. Namco's own weapons-based fighter Soul Edge (SoulBlade) would more or less prove to be the final nail in the coffin, the third Toshinden being rather obscure and the fourth one only being released in Japan and Europe.

You may ask why anyone would more or less shed a tear over a mediocre game/series that was - pretty much rightfully - lost in the depths in time due in that ebb and flow we call progress. Well, the answer is pretty simple although some will obviously question it: the characters.

Does anyone like the cast of characters as much as I do? Ok, I know they don't exactly ooze originality, but I guess they (at least the original 12) wormed their way into heart, and I always kind of thought how cool the games could have been had Namco had developed them instead.

But speaking of Toshinden 4, I was reading up on it and the premise of it sounded interesting. Can anyone in the PAL territories give me their impression of it? I'm not going to run out and get it and a PAL Playstation, but I'm curious about it.

I can't believe I still own the first two games.  I  popped them in just for the hell of it.  They don't look half bad; I remember being especially impressed by Toshinden 2's graphical prowess back in the day, and the gameplay made excellent strides to feel not quite as rigid as its predecessor's.  I recall being a Tracy player, but Chaos was a total blast to play.  Fo is a riot; it's always amusing seeing him do his rolling ball technique right into a ring out.

But of course, it's all about the music.  The scores are still flat out amazing, who's redbook audio I suspect is the reason why I've held on to the games for this long.  My favorites include Eiji and Duke from the first, and Eiji, Duke, Chaos, Mondo and Sho from the second.  I also like how Gaia from BAT2 shares the same theme as Mondo's from the first.  And of course, Kayin from BAT1 is balls-out swingin' good fun.

Anyone bother with that new Toshinden game for the Wii that came out last year?

Amen to that.

I only ever really played BAT1 and only rented BAT2, but damn the music was fantastic.
Eiji, Duke, Kayin, Ellis, Rungo, Fo, I loved all of it in BAT1.
The Retake & Remix album is really good too.

Did you know the JP version of the first game only has synth and no guitars?
Yeah, it sucked to find that out when I first bought it.

Edit: Couldn't find any music videos on Youtube, but here's a gameplay video of the JP version of Eiji's Stage. You should immediately notice the difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8KaXD9WPSY