Soul Edge is a fighting game developed by the Namco team Project Soul and published by Namco as the first installment in the Soulcalibur series of 3D fighting games. Introduced at the JAMMA trade show in November 1995, the full arcade game was released in early 1996, while later in December an upgraded and expanded version of the game was ported to the PlayStation. The PlayStation version was renamed Soul Blade in North America, Europe, and Australia.

A fighting game is a genre of video game that involves combat between two or more characters. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as blocking, grappling, counter-attacking, and chaining attacks together into "combos". Characters generally engage in battle using hand-to-hand combat—often some form of martial arts. The fighting game genre is related to, but distinct from, the beat 'em up genre, which pits large numbers of computer-controlled enemies against one or more player characters.