There’s a decent chance you’ve never heard of Plasma Sword, but if you’re in the fighting game community you almost certainly will recognize its main protagonist, Hayato, the laser sword-wielding, intergalactic bounty hunter of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 fame. Why bring this all up now? Because Capcom just announced the Capcom Fighting Collection 2, which features Plasma Sword amid seven other classic Capcom fighters.
It also just so happens that GuileWinQuote has impeccable timing and recently released a video entirely focused on the 3D fighter. From gameplay to characters to crazy lore, continue on to hear all about this old game that you’ll soon have the chance to play on modern consoles.
Toward the end of the 1990’s Capcom was actually designing a Star Wars game, but somewhere along the way plans changed and developers had to salvage their work and go in a different direction.
The project ultimately ended up becoming Star Gladiator, a 3D weapon fighter that wound up seeing enough success enough to warrant a sequel: Plasma Sword.
Plasma Sword combines elements of 2D, 3D, and anime fighting games together for an experience quite unlike most anything else, including its predecessor. The action moves quickly as characters can maneuver along both the X and Z axis while rifling off high profile super combos and dashing both on the ground and in midair.
The character select screen is actually a bit deceptive as it shows off some 22 characters (there are two hidden for a total of 24), but half the roster is essentially cloned from the other half. The differences are widely visual in most cases, and so it’s probably more accurate to say the game features closer to 12 characters.
You can hear all about Plasma Sword via the full video below. Give it a watch and let us know if this is your first time hearing about the game, and whether or not you’ll be playing it when it arrives as part of the Capcom Fighting Collection 2 in 2025 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Steam.
Banner artwork credit: Josef Axner.