The Fighting Game Boss Tribute: Bilstein from Star Gladiator and Plasma Sword
Dr. Edward Bilstein the main Antagonist of Star Gladiator and Plasma Sword drawn by Pio Paulo Santana
“When I was working on this piece, I was re-watching some Batman: The Animated Series episodes and was enamored by the simplistic style. I drew some parallels between the animation-ready art style and the ‘ol simple 3D graphics of Star Gladiators, both were simple but conveyed the characters effectively.
I chose Bilstein as my subject because I’m naturally drawn to powerful characters. To me, his character was very powerful not just because he was the boss (but that helps too) but because of how he carried himself. His fighting stance looked imposing and his moves were devastating.”
“Never underestimate the Power of the Dark Side” ?
Bilstein is the final boss of the Star Gladiator and Plasma Sword fighting games. Those were two arcade games released for the Playstation and the Dreamcast, the series was discontinued after the second part.
He was most likely be designed after Darth Vader, actually the whole Star Gladiator game was first developed to be a Star Wars game, but then another company got the job and we got the really cheesy SW: Masters of Teräs Käsi game…why LucasArts denied the early prototype Capcom pitched to them is sadly unknown.
Bilstein was a relative easy boss character, there was a second a bit harder version of him called Ghost Bilstein, but he was still not a challenge like the most other fighting game bosses.
Bilstein in his updated design from Plasma Sword, drawn by fngrscr8dstroui
Both illustrations of Bilstein were drawn back in 2011 when we started the first version of our Fighting Game Boss Tribute.
