Battle Arena Toshinden
Battle Arena Toshinden is a fighting video game developed by Tamsoft and published by Takara for the PlayStation. Originally released in 1995, it was released internationally by Sony Computer Entertainment, followed by 1996 ports for the Sega Saturn, Game Boy and MS-DOS. It was one of the first fighting games, after Virtua Fighter in 1993 on arcade and console, to boast polygonal characters in a 3D environment, and features a sidestep maneuver which is credited for taking the genre into "true 3D."
| Battle Arena Toshinden | |
|---|---|
North American PlayStation box art | |
| Developer(s) | Tamsoft Digital Dialect (MS-DOS) |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation, Saturn, MS-DOS, Game Boy |
| Release | PlayStation Saturn Game Boy DOS
|
| Genre(s) | Fighting |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
The game was announced as a PlayStation exclusive, with Sony initially promoting it as a "Saturn killer" (against Sega's Virtua Fighter), but ironically a Saturn port published by Sega with additional features was released less than a year later. A drastically different port for the Game Boy was released by Takara in Japan and Nintendo internationally in 1996, making it the only game to have been published by all of the largest console manufacturers of its time; it is a 2D fighting game and can be enhanced when played on the Super Game Boy.
After fighting games like Tekken started emerging, Battle Arena Toshinden declined in popularity, but still spawned a series of sequels, starting with Battle Arena Toshinden 2. Battle Arena Toshinden was the first 3D weapons fighter, and was succeeded in spirit by Soul Edge and other games of the genre.