Sometimes, dead is better.
Fast forward to 2008. Let's face it, a lot of things that seemed great to a lot of people in 1999 are pretty obsolete now. Like RIcky Martin and boy bands. Like Prince's "1999" song. Like our Dreamcasts, although I still own mine. And like, I'm sorry to say it, Soulcalibur.
Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is still just as solid after all these years (as it is with the backwards-compatible SC II), and that isn't really the problem here. It's just that prestine videogame memories don't tend to hold up against the effort to relive them. Everything still looks good here, but the "WOW" factor is long gone, and it's hard to get past the lower polygon counts of 1999, and playing on a 4:3 screen (in spite of the HD presentation). And stripping away Mission Mode and having everything unlocked from the start really kills this game from a longevity standpoint. It's bad enough that online play wasn't included, but now I'm expected for fork over $10 for what amounts to a bare-bones version of a game that was released almost NINE YEARS AGO?! Sure, I did it because I loved Soulcalibur back in the day, but I can think of a lot of other things I loved "back in the day" that I wouldn't care to repeat...think "mullet".
If you really need to play Soulcalibur yet again and somehow didn't get your fix when you had your Dreamcasts, and prepared to play an inferior version while you're at it, then by all means, knock yourself out. But with SC II out there and SC IV less than a month away, you're better off not dusting off your best Soulcalibur memories. Nostalgia for nostalgia's sake is not always a good thing.