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Mathematical physics

Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The Journal of Mathematical Physics defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of mathematical methods suitable for such applications and for the formulation of physical theories". An alternative definition would also include those mathematics that are inspired by physics, known as physical mathematics.

Scope
There are several distinct branches of mathematical physics, and these roughly correspond to particular historical parts of our world.

Classical mechanics
Applying the techniques of mathematical physics to classical mechanics typically involves the rigorous, abstract, and advanced reformulation of Newtonian mechanics in terms of Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics (including both approaches in the presence of constraints). Both formulations are embodied in analytical mechanics and lead to an understanding of the deep interplay between the notions of symmetry and conserved quantities during the dynamical evolution of mechanical systems, as embodied within the most elementary formulation of Noether's theorem. These approaches and ideas have been extended to other areas of physics, such as statistical mechanics, continuum mechanics, classical field theory, and quantum field theory. Moreover, they have provided multiple examples and ideas in differential geometry (e.g., several notions in symplectic geometry and vector bundles).

Partial differential equations
Within mathematics proper, the theory of partial differential equation, variational calculus, Fourier analysis, potential theory, and vector analysis are perhaps most closely associated with mathematical physics. These fields were developed intensively from the second half of the 18th century (by, for example, D'Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange) until the 1930s. Physical applications of these developments include hydrodynamics, celestial mechanics, continuum mechanics, elasticity theory, acoustics, thermodynamics, electricity, magnetism, and aerodynamics.

Quantum theory
The theory of atomic spectra (and, later, quantum mechanics) developed almost concurrently with some parts of the mathematical fields of linear algebra, the spectral theory of operators, operator algebras and, more broadly, functional analysis. Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics includes Schrödinger operators, and it has connections to atomic and molecular physics. Quantum information theory is another subspecialty.

Relativity and quantum relativistic theories
The special and general theories of relativity require a rather different type of mathematics. This was group theory, which played an important role in both quantum field theory and differential geometry. This was, however, gradually supplemented by topology and functional analysis in the mathematical description of cosmological as well as quantum field theory phenomena. In the mathematical description of these physical areas, some concepts in homological algebra and category theory are also important.

Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics forms a separate field, which includes the theory of phase transitions. It relies upon the Hamiltonian mechanics (or its quantum version) and it is closely related with the more mathematical ergodic theory and some parts of probability theory. There are increasing interactions between combinatorics and physics, in particular statistical physics.

Usage
The usage of the term "mathematical physics" is sometimes idiosyncratic. Certain parts of mathematics that initially arose from the development of physics are not, in fact, considered parts of mathematical physics, while other closely related fields are. For example, ordinary differential equations and symplectic geometry are generally viewed as purely mathematical disciplines, whereas dynamical systems and Hamiltonian mechanics belong to mathematical physics. John Herapath used the term for the title of his 1847 text on "mathematical principles of natural philosophy", the scope at that time being "the causes of heat, gaseous elasticity, gravitation, and other great phenomena of nature".

Mathematical vs. theoretical physics
The term "mathematical physics" is sometimes used to denote research aimed at studying and solving problems in physics or thought experiments within a mathematically rigorous framework. In this sense, mathematical physics covers a very broad academic realm distinguished only by the blending of some mathematical aspect and theoretical physics aspect. Although related to theoretical physics, mathematical physics in this sense emphasizes the mathematical rigour of the similar type as found in mathematics.

On the other hand, theoretical physics emphasizes the links to observations and experimental physics, which often requires theoretical physicists (and mathematical physicists in the more general sense) to use heuristic, intuitive, or approximate arguments. Such arguments are not considered rigorous by mathematicians.

Such mathematical physicists primarily expand and elucidate physical theories. Because of the required level of mathematical rigour, these researchers often deal with questions that theoretical physicists have considered to be already solved. However, they can sometimes show that the previous solution was incomplete, incorrect, or simply too naïve. Issues about attempts to infer the second law of thermodynamics from statistical mechanics are examples. Other examples concern the subtleties involved with synchronisation procedures in special and general relativity (Sagnac effect and Einstein synchronisation).

The effort to put physical theories on a mathematically rigorous footing not only developed physics but also has influenced developments of some mathematical areas. For example, the development of quantum mechanics and some aspects of functional analysis parallel each other in many ways. The mathematical study of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and quantum statistical mechanics has motivated results in operator algebras. The attempt to construct a rigorous mathematical formulation of quantum field theory has also brought about some progress in fields such as representation theory.

Before Newton
There is a tradition of mathematical analysis of nature that goes back to the ancient Greeks; examples include Euclid (Optics), Archimedes (On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies), and Ptolemy (Optics, Harmonics). Later, Islamic and Byzantine scholars built on these works, and these ultimately were reintroduced or became available to the West in the 12th century and during the Renaissance.

In the first decade of the 16th century, amateur astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus proposed heliocentrism, and published a treatise on it in 1543. He retained the Ptolemaic idea of epicycles, and merely sought to simplify astronomy by constructing simpler sets of epicyclic orbits. Epicycles consist of circles upon circles. According to Aristotelian physics, the circle was the perfect form of motion, and was the intrinsic motion of Aristotle's fifth element—the quintessence or universal essence known in Greek as aether for the English pure air—that was the pure substance beyond the sublunary sphere, and thus was celestial entities' pure composition. The German Johannes Kepler [1571–1630], Tycho Brahe's assistant, modified Copernican orbits to ellipses, formalized in the equations of Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

An enthusiastic atomist, Galileo Galilei in his 1623 book The Assayer asserted that the "book of nature is written in mathematics". His 1632 book, about his telescopic observations, supported heliocentrism. Having introduced experimentation, Galileo then refuted geocentric cosmology by refuting Aristotelian physics itself. Galileo's 1638 book Discourse on Two New Sciences established the law of equal free fall as well as the principles of inertial motion, founding the central concepts of what would become today's classical mechanics. By the Galilean law of inertia as well as the principle of Galilean invariance, also called Galilean relativity, for any object experiencing inertia, there is empirical justification for knowing only that it is at relative rest or relative motion—rest or motion with respect to another object.

René Descartes famously developed a complete system of heliocentric cosmology anchored on the principle of vortex motion, Cartesian physics, whose widespread acceptance brought the demise of Aristotelian physics. Descartes sought to formalize mathematical reasoning in science, and developed Cartesian coordinates for geometrically plotting locations in 3D space and marking their progressions along the flow of time.

An older contemporary of Newton, Christiaan Huygens, was the first to idealize a physical problem by a set of parameters and the first to fully mathematize a mechanistic explanation of unobservable physical phenomena, and for these reasons Huygens is considered the first theoretical physicist and one of the founders of modern mathematical physics.

Descartes, Newtonian physics and post Newtonian
Descartes sought to formalize mathematical reasoning in science, and developed Cartesian coordinates for geometrically plotting locations in 3D space and marking their progressions along the flow of time. Before Descartes geometry and description of space followed the constructive model from ancient mathematical greeks. In such sense geometrical shapes formed the building block to describe and think about space, with time being an separate entity. Descarted introduced a new way to describe space using the algebra, until then, a mathematical tool used mostly for commercial transactions. Cartesian coordinates also introduced the idea of time on pair with space as just another axis of coordinates. This essential mathematical framework is at the base of all modern physics and used in all further mathematical frameworks developed in next centuries.

In this era, important concepts in calculus such as the fundamental theorem of calculus (proved in 1668 by Scottish mathematician James Gregory ) and finding extrema and minima of functions via differentiation using Fermat's theorem (by French mathematician Pierre de Fermat) were already known before Leibniz and Newton. Isaac Newton (1642–1727) developed some concepts in calculus (although Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz developed similar concepts outside the context of physics) and Newton's method to solve problems in physics. He was extremely successful in his application of calculus to the theory of motion. Newton's theory of motion, shown in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, published in 1687, modeled three Galilean laws of motion along with Newton's law of universal gravitation on a framework of absolute space—hypothesized by Newton as a physically real entity of Euclidean geometric structure extending infinitely in all directions—while presuming absolute time, supposedly justifying knowledge of absolute motion, the object's motion with respect to absolute space. The principle of Galilean invariance/relativity was merely implicit in Newton's theory of motion. Having ostensibly reduced the Keplerian celestial laws of motion as well as Galilean terrestrial laws of motion to a unifying force, Newton achieved great mathematical rigor, but with theoretical laxity.

In the 18th century, the Swiss Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) made contributions to fluid dynamics, and vibrating strings. The Swiss Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) did special work in variational calculus, dynamics, fluid dynamics, and other areas. Also notable was the Italian-born Frenchman, Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) for work in analytical mechanics: he formulated Lagrangian mechanics) and variational methods. A major contribution to the formulation of Analytical Dynamics called Hamiltonian dynamics was also made by the Irish physicist, astronomer and mathematician, William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865). Hamiltonian dynamics had played an important role in the formulation of modern theories in physics, including field theory and quantum mechanics. The French mathematical physicist Joseph Fourier (1768 – 1830) introduced the notion of Fourier series to solve the heat equation, giving rise to a new approach to solving partial differential equations by means of integral transforms.

Into the early 19th century, following mathematicians in France, Germany and England had contributed to mathematical physics. The French Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) made paramount contributions to mathematical astronomy, potential theory. Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840) worked in analytical mechanics and potential theory. In Germany, Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) made key contributions to the theoretical foundations of electricity, magnetism, mechanics, and fluid dynamics. In England, George Green (1793–1841) published An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism in 1828, which in addition to its significant contributions to mathematics made early progress towards laying down the mathematical foundations of electricity and magnetism.

A couple of decades ahead of Newton's publication of a particle theory of light, the Dutch Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) developed the wave theory of light, published in 1690. By 1804, Thomas Young's double-slit experiment revealed an interference pattern, as though light were a wave, and thus Huygens's wave theory of light, as well as Huygens's inference that light waves were vibrations of the luminiferous aether, was accepted. Jean-Augustin Fresnel modeled hypothetical behavior of the aether. The English physicist Michael Faraday introduced the theoretical concept of a field—not action at a distance. Mid-19th century, the Scottish James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) reduced electricity and magnetism to Maxwell's electromagnetic field theory, whittled down by others to the four Maxwell's equations. Initially, optics was found consequent of Maxwell's field. Later, radiation and then today's known electromagnetic spectrum were found also consequent of this electromagnetic field.

The English physicist Lord Rayleigh [1842–1919] worked on sound. The Irishmen William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865), George Gabriel Stokes (1819–1903) and Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) produced several major works: Stokes was a leader in optics and fluid dynamics; Kelvin made substantial discoveries in thermodynamics; Hamilton did notable work on analytical mechanics, discovering a new and powerful approach nowadays known as Hamiltonian mechanics. Very relevant contributions to this approach are due to his German colleague mathematician Carl Gustav Jacobi (1804–1851) in particular referring to canonical transformations. The German Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) made substantial contributions in the fields of electromagnetism, waves, fluids, and sound. In the United States, the pioneering work of Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903) became the basis for statistical mechanics. Fundamental theoretical results in this area were achieved by the German Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906). Together, these individuals laid the foundations of electromagnetic theory, fluid dynamics, and statistical mechanics.

Relativistic
By the 1880s, there was a prominent paradox that an observer within Maxwell's electromagnetic field measured it at approximately constant speed, regardless of the observer's speed relative to other objects within the electromagnetic field. Thus, although the observer's speed was continually lost relative to the electromagnetic field, it was preserved relative to other objects in the electromagnetic field. And yet no violation of Galilean invariance within physical interactions among objects was detected. As Maxwell's electromagnetic field was modeled as oscillations of the aether, physicists inferred that motion within the aether resulted in aether drift, shifting the electromagnetic field, explaining the observer's missing speed relative to it. The Galilean transformation had been the mathematical process used to translate the positions in one reference frame to predictions of positions in another reference frame, all plotted on Cartesian coordinates, but this process was replaced by Lorentz transformation, modeled by the Dutch Hendrik Lorentz [1853–1928].

In 1887, experimentalists Michelson and Morley failed to detect aether drift, however. It was hypothesized that motion into the aether prompted aether's shortening, too, as modeled in the Lorentz contraction. It was hypothesized that the aether thus kept Maxwell's electromagnetic field aligned with the principle of Galilean invariance across all inertial frames of reference, while Newton's theory of motion was spared.

Austrian theoretical physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach criticized Newton's postulated absolute space. Mathematician Jules-Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) questioned even absolute time. In 1905, Pierre Duhem published a devastating criticism of the foundation of Newton's theory of motion. Also in 1905, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) published his special theory of relativity, newly explaining both the electromagnetic field's invariance and Galilean invariance by discarding all hypotheses concerning aether, including the existence of aether itself. Refuting the framework of Newton's theory—absolute space and absolute time—special relativity refers to relative space and relative time, whereby length contracts and time dilates along the travel pathway of an object.

Cartesian coordinates arbitrarily used rectilinear coordinates. Gauss, inspired by Descartes' work, introduced the curved geometry, replacing rectilinear axis by curved ones. Gauss also introduced another key tool of modern physics, the curvature. Gauss's work was limited to two dimensions. Extending it to three or more dimensions introduced a lot of complexity, with the need of the (not yet invented) tensors. It was Riemman the one in charge to extend curved geometry to N dimensions. In 1908, Einstein's former mathematics professor Hermann Minkowski, applied the curved geometry construction to model 3D space together with the 1D axis of time by treating the temporal axis like a fourth spatial dimension—altogether 4D spacetime—and declared the imminent demise of the separation of space and time. Einstein initially called this "superfluous learnedness", but later used Minkowski spacetime with great elegance in his general theory of relativity, extending invariance to all reference frames—whether perceived as inertial or as accelerated—and credited this to Minkowski, by then deceased. General relativity replaces Cartesian coordinates with Gaussian coordinates, and replaces Newton's claimed empty yet Euclidean space traversed instantly by Newton's vector of hypothetical gravitational force—an instant action at a distance—with a gravitational field. The gravitational field is Minkowski spacetime itself, the 4D topology of Einstein aether modeled on a Lorentzian manifold that "curves" geometrically, according to the Riemann curvature tensor. The concept of Newton's gravity: "two masses attract each other" replaced by the geometrical argument: "mass transform curvatures of spacetime and free falling particles with mass move along a geodesic curve in the spacetime" (Riemannian geometry already existed before the 1850s, by mathematicians Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard Riemann in search for intrinsic geometry and non-Euclidean geometry.), in the vicinity of either mass or energy. (Under special relativity—a special case of general relativity—even massless energy exerts gravitational effect by its mass equivalence locally "curving" the geometry of the four, unified dimensions of space and time.)

Quantum
Another revolutionary development of the 20th century was quantum theory, which emerged from the seminal contributions of Max Planck (1856–1947) (on black-body radiation) and Einstein's work on the photoelectric effect. In 1912, a mathematician Henri Poincare published Sur la théorie des quanta. He introduced the first non-naïve definition of quantization in this paper. The development of early quantum physics followed by a heuristic framework devised by Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951) and Niels Bohr (1885–1962), but this was soon replaced by the quantum mechanics developed by Max Born (1882–1970), Louis de Broglie(1892–1987), Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), Paul Dirac (1902–1984), Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974), and Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958). This revolutionary theoretical framework is based on a probabilistic interpretation of states, and evolution and measurements in terms of self-adjoint operators on an infinite-dimensional vector space. That is called Hilbert space (introduced by mathematicians David Hilbert (1862–1943), Erhard Schmidt(1876–1959) and Frigyes Riesz (1880–1956) in search of generalization of Euclidean space and study of integral equations), and rigorously defined within the axiomatic modern version by John von Neumann in his celebrated book Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, where he built up a relevant part of modern functional analysis on Hilbert spaces, the spectral theory (introduced by David Hilbert who investigated quadratic forms with infinitely many variables. Many years later, it had been revealed that his spectral theory is associated with the spectrum of the hydrogen atom. He was surprised by this application.) in particular. Paul Dirac used algebraic constructions to produce a relativistic model for the electron, predicting its magnetic moment and the existence of its antiparticle, the positron.

List of prominent contributors to mathematical physics in the 20th century
Prominent contributors to the 20th century's mathematical physics include (ordered by birth date):

 * William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) [1824–1907]
 * Oliver Heaviside [1850–1925]
 * Jules Henri Poincaré [1854–1912]
 * David Hilbert [1862–1943]
 * Arnold Sommerfeld [1868–1951]
 * Constantin Carathéodory [1873–1950]
 * Albert Einstein [1879–1955]
 * Max Born [1882–1970]
 * George David Birkhoff [1884–1944]
 * Hermann Weyl [1885–1955]
 * Satyendra Nath Bose [1894–1974]
 * Louis de Broglie [1892–1987]]
 * Norbert Wiener [1894–1964]
 * John Lighton Synge [1897–1995]
 * Mário Schenberg [1914–1990]
 * Wolfgang Pauli [1900–1958]
 * Paul Dirac [1902–1984]
 * Eugene Wigner [1902–1995]
 * Andrey Kolmogorov [1903–1987]
 * Lars Onsager [1903–1976]
 * John von Neumann [1903–1957]
 * Sin-Itiro Tomonaga [1906–1979]
 * Hideki Yukawa [1907–1981]
 * Nikolay Nikolayevich Bogolyubov [1909–1992]
 * Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar [1910–1995]
 * Mark Kac [1914–1984]
 * Julian Schwinger [1918–1994]
 * Richard Phillips Feynman [1918–1988]
 * Irving Ezra Segal [1918–1998]
 * Ryogo Kubo [1920–1995]
 * Arthur Strong Wightman [1922–2013]
 * Chen-Ning Yang [1922– ]
 * Rudolf Haag [1922–2016]
 * Freeman John Dyson [1923–2020]
 * Martin Gutzwiller [1925–2014]
 * Abdus Salam [1926–1996]
 * Jürgen Moser [1928–1999]
 * Michael Francis Atiyah [1929–2019]
 * Joel Louis Lebowitz [1930– ]
 * Roger Penrose [1931– ]
 * Elliott Hershel Lieb [1932– ]
 * Yakir Aharonov [1932– ]
 * Sheldon Glashow [1932– ]
 * Steven Weinberg [1933–2021]
 * Ludvig Dmitrievich Faddeev [1934–2017]
 * David Ruelle [1935– ]
 * Yakov Grigorevich Sinai [1935– ]
 * Vladimir Igorevich Arnold [1937–2010]
 * Arthur Michael Jaffe [1937– ]
 * Roman Wladimir Jackiw [1939– ]
 * Leonard Susskind [1940– ]
 * Rodney James Baxter [1940– ]
 * Michael Victor Berry [1941– ]
 * Giovanni Gallavotti [1941– ]
 * Stephen William Hawking [1942–2018]
 * Jerrold Eldon Marsden [1942–2010]
 * Michael C. Reed [1942– ]
 * John Michael Kosterlitz [1943– ]
 * Israel Michael Sigal [1945– ]
 * Alexander Markovich Polyakov [1945– ]
 * Barry Simon [1946– ]
 * Herbert Spohn [1946– ]
 * John Lawrence Cardy [1947– ]
 * Giorgio Parisi [1948- ]
 * Abhay Ashtekar [1949- ]
 * Edward Witten [1951– ]
 * F. Duncan Haldane [1951– ]
 * Ashoke Sen [1956– ]
 * Juan Martín Maldacena [1968– ]

Textbooks for undergraduate studies

 * , (Mathematical Methods for Physicists, Solutions for Mathematical Methods for Physicists (7th ed.), archive.org)
 * Hassani, Sadri (2009), Mathematical Methods for Students of Physics and Related Fields, (2nd ed.), New York, Springer, eISBN 978-0-387-09504-2
 * Hassani, Sadri (2009), Mathematical Methods for Students of Physics and Related Fields, (2nd ed.), New York, Springer, eISBN 978-0-387-09504-2
 * Hassani, Sadri (2009), Mathematical Methods for Students of Physics and Related Fields, (2nd ed.), New York, Springer, eISBN 978-0-387-09504-2
 * Hassani, Sadri (2009), Mathematical Methods for Students of Physics and Related Fields, (2nd ed.), New York, Springer, eISBN 978-0-387-09504-2

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Time domain

Time domain refers to the analysis of mathematical functions, physical signals or time series of economic or environmental data, with respect to time. In the time domain, the signal or function's value is known for all real numbers, for the case of continuous time, or at various separate instants in the case of discrete time. An oscilloscope is a tool commonly used to visualize real-world signals in the time domain. A time-domain graph shows how a signal changes with time, whereas a frequency-domain graph shows how much of the signal lies within each given frequency band over a range of frequencies.

Though most precisely referring to time in physics, the term time domain may occasionally informally refer to position in space when dealing with spatial frequencies, as a substitute for the more precise term spatial domain.

Origin of term
The use of the contrasting terms time domain and frequency domain developed in U.S. communication engineering in the late 1940s, with the terms appearing together without definition by 1950. When an analysis uses the second or one of its multiples as a unit of measurement, then it is in the time domain. When analysis concerns the reciprocal units such as Hertz, then it is in the frequency domain.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Time domain


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User:Wintran

ello!

Welcome to my page on Wikipedia. Feel free to ask me stuff.

Interests and hobbies

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 * Thinking : Few things are as engaging to me as thinking and philosophy. The universe, nature, politics, psychology and the inner-workings of humans can absorb my attention and devour my waking hours in no time. In my thinking, I prefer logic, science and simplicity, though I accept that there are things we do not know and that true spirituality and the supernatural might exist. I'd be more than happy if they did, but I cannot assume it until I see proof. Some specific subjects that keep returning to my mind are the meaning of life, pacifism, intellectual property, feminism, emotions and emotional intelligence. I'm more afraid of ignorance and stagnation than I am of admitting that I was wrong.
 * Chinese martial arts : I have always been fascinated by martial arts. Not its means of causing harm but its technical complexity and the beauty of the physical artforms that have come to surround most Asian martial arts. I have taken lessons in Shaolin kung fu and Chen style Tai Chi Chuan, and are interested in the development of contemporary wushu.
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Wikipedia
I consider Wikipedia to be the overall best website in the history of Internet. It's a joy to see all this knowledge being gathered into one place that is available for everyone to see, to witness how it's constantly growing, and to even be able to contribute to it myself. This is a fine example of freedom and trust at its best and is in my opinion a great example of a working relationship between a large complex system and the people who use it. It proves that openness is effective as it automatically gives authority to people who're genuinely interested in the system or a specific part of it. I'd like to see a government that operates in similar ways.

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Soulcalibur (video game)

Soulcalibur (ソウルキャリバー) is a weapon-based 3D fighting game developed by Project Soul and produced by Namco. It is the second game in the Soulcalibur series, preceded by Soul Edge in December 1995. Originally released in arcades on July 30, 1998, it ran on the Namco System 12 hardware. It was ported to the Dreamcast in 1999 with new features and improved graphics. The North American version was released in September 1999 as a launch game for the Dreamcast and was part of the successful launch of the new console. It became available as a downloadable title on the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Marketplace in July 2008 and it is forward compatible with the Xbox One along with the sequel, Soulcalibur II.

The game centers on the pursuit of the legendary weapon known as Soul Edge, now in the possession of a warrior known as Nightmare, who slaughters countless people to satisfy the blade's bloodlust. Other warriors pursue him either to claim the weapon for themselves or to destroy it, end his mass murder, and free him of its curse. Developed closely with Namco's Tekken development team, it is one of the few home console ports that outdid their arcade parent performance-wise. The title brought many innovations to the fighting game genre that include a heavy emphasis on weapons and a unique eight-way movement system.

Soulcalibur received unanimous critical applause upon release; it is the second-highest-rated video game of all time, with a 98 rating on Metacritic. It won the majority of Game of the Year awards in its respective year, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest fighting games and one of the greatest video games ever made, topping numerous "best of" lists in years following.

Gameplay
One of the biggest innovations introduced by Soulcalibur to the gameplay system of its predecessor, Soul Edge, is the eight-way run. Previous 3D fighters had only limited movement along the third axis, with sidesteps and rolls providing useful but unsustained lateral movement. In Soulcalibur, simply holding down a joystick direction causes the character to move in that direction, giving the player a sense of freedom and deepening the strategy of the game.

Soulcalibur also features "forgiving buffering", allowing players to enter an input for one move before their characters have finished recovering from their previous move, which makes executing a quick succession of moves easier (other fighting games such as the Tekken and Virtua Fighter series have relatively strict buffering requirements, meaning expert timing is required to pull off many combinations, but Soulcalibur features much more lenient timing to successfully execute a buffer). Finally, the Guard Impact offensive blocking maneuver shown in Soul Edge has been given a deeper range of techniques, allowing players to push back or redirect attacks past themselves as well as swatting away an opponent's weapon to stun them.

Characters
Soulcalibur was originally planned to be a dramatic overhaul, with all new characters apart from Mitsurugi from Soul Edge. However, nine of the 11 characters from Soul Edge ended up carrying over to Soulcalibur by the time the roster was finalized in the Dreamcast version (Cervantes, Hwang, Seong Mi-na, Mitsurugi, Rock, Siegfried, Sophitia, Taki, Voldo), with an additional ten new characters joining the ranks (in the South Korean version of the game, Mitsurugi was replaced by an English-Japanese swordsman named Arthur ). Cervantes exclusively appears outside original arcade version, in additions to a playable version of the final boss character, Inferno. The arcade version featured a staggered Time Release system for hidden characters akin to the Tekken series as well as codes that could be entered on the Namco website.

As with many fighting games, many of the new characters were heavily styled after existing characters from the franchise. For example, new character Maxi has a fighting style and move set influenced by Soul Edge's Li Long (the only of the original starting characters not to return). In fact, Soulcalibur only added one original playing style, belonging to Ivy. New characters Xianghua, Maxi, Yoshimitsu, Astaroth, Kilik, Nightmare (re-introduced from Soul Edge as a regular character), and Lizardman were based upon existing characters Hwang, Li Long, Mitsurugi, Rock, Seong Mi-na, Siegfried, and Sophitia, respectively. Consequently, Namco has been working since Soulcalibur to gradually separate the individual styles of the characters in order to make each one unique.

Plot
The mystical sword of the legends, the "Soul Edge", ended up in the hands of the dreaded pirate Cervantes de Leon of Spain. For the next 25 years, he stayed dormant on the remnants of a Spanish port town, taking the souls of those who reached him during their search of the sword. Like Soul Edge, starts in the year 1583. The reign of terror of Cervantes was soon to start, but through the joined efforts of Greek divine warrior Sophitia Alexandra and Japanese ninja Taki, he was stopped and killed, with one of the twin Soul Edge blades being shattered in the process. As it was about to tear itself apart, young German knight Siegfried Schtauffen approached the port town and battled Cervantes, whose corpse had been momentarily reanimated through Soul Edge's will. After emerging victorious, Siegfried's attention turned unto the sword. The moment he took the hilt of the cursed blade, Soul Edge released a bright column of light into the sky. This was known as the "Evil Seed", bound to bring calamity and death in its wake.

Three years after those events, in 1586 AD, Soul Edge uses Siegfried as its host, and now Siegfried is Nightmare, a knight wearing azure armor and sporting a hideously deformed right arm. Europe plunges into a vortex of slaughters as he and his followers claim souls to strengthen the blade in its weakened state. Unknown to them, a group of warriors met on their journey to stop Soul Edge, and with them, three sacred weapons join once again.

Development
After releasing Soul Edge, Namco took some time to evaluate what had made the game successful before jumping into the development of its sequel. Producer Hiroaki Yotoriyama decided to give the sequel a new name instead of just calling it Soul Edge 2 in order to have a fresh start and take the series in a new direction. The name Soulcalibur is a portmanteau of the word soul (as in Soul Edge) and King Arthur's sword Excalibur (ultimately, the name would be used within the game's universe for the holy weapon which would counteract Soul Edge's evil). Inspired by an internal Namco prototype featuring a character able to run openly in a field, the eight-way run system was implemented. Upon application, the development team was surprised at how well it meshed with their fighting system and decided to build the rest of the game around it. During development they worked closely with Namco's Tekken development team, sharing ideas and research. Yotoriyama felt that with that cooperation and partnership, they were able to develop "the greatest weapon-based fighting action game in the world".

Yotoriyama has described the game's concept as expressing "fun and diversity in weapon combat", citing the contrast in how one weapon would affect gameplay compared to another and how they would react to each other upon clashing. Each character's fighting style was designed to revolve around their weapon, though he noted that because of the differences they experienced difficulty in balancing the gameplay. He described the availability of movement in comparison to Tekken 3 as a large contrast between the two series and more tactical and emphasized how it interacted with the game's "ring out" feature. Each character in Soulcalibur was designed around the idea that they could be viewed as a real person could, and to this end, motion creator Masataka Ishiguro emphasized the arm and leg movements for each character in relation to their weapon, wanting players to "feel the individual motions and the realism within the game"

It had been announced in January as "New Weapon Fighting Game" and a test version was shown at E3 in May. The team for the arcade version of Soulcalibur consisted of roughly sixty people working on Namco's System 12 hardware, while the team developing the home port was reduced to about forty. Given a deadline of seven months to coincide with the North American launch of the Dreamcast, the transition was difficult for the team, due to the differences in hardware. However, due to the similar capabilities and limits of each system, content was left intact between the two versions, with Yotoriyama feeling that the team was "obsessed" with giving their best effort for the port. The biggest technological change to the Dreamcast port was to render all of the game's stages in full 3D polygons, whereas the far backgrounds in the arcade original were flat, two-dimensional images. Additional content was also added to the game to ensure replay value, based on researching other fighting games marketed at the time. Many of the team's ideas that they were unable to incorporate into the port were eventually used for later games in the series.

Release
The game was originally released in the Japanese arcades on July 30, 1998, with releases in North America and Europe following later the same year. A Gamest Book series guide book Soul Calibur Skill Up Manual (ソウルキャリバー スキルアップマニュアル) was published by Shinseisha on September 27, 1998.

Dreamcast
The Dreamcast port of Soulcalibur was released in Japan on August 5, 1999; and in North America and Europe as launch titles, on September 9, 1999, and November 26, 1999, respectively. The North American Dreamcast version of the game removes one of Voldo's suggestive codpieces featuring a bull. However, the codpiece is present in the European and Japanese versions, as well as the North American Xbox 360 version. The European Dreamcast version was distributed and advertised by Sega Europe.

The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur is one of the first examples of a home conversion of a game being graphically superior to its original arcade counterpart. Among the differences were the improved graphics (including the addition of 3D backgrounds), tweaked gameplay, new game modes, new costumes, and the inclusion of an extra character, Cervantes de Leon. The Dreamcast version features new modes such as Team Battle, Survival, and Training Mode. In Mission Battle, the player completes various missions to attain points, which can be used to buy various art, which then unlocks extra features, costumes and stages. Another feature added is the artwork section, containing official artwork, fanart, and high-res pictures. Also unlockable are a "liquid metal" version of the characters' costume and a "Battle Theater" mode, plus a way to modify the opening introduction theme by changing the characters appearing in it, and an "Exhibition Mode" displaying characters performing their katas (in Mission Mode it is possible to add more characters to the "Exhibition Mode", such as Taki and Seung Mina).

Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)
In 2008, Namco Bandai Games announced a port of Soulcalibur would be released for the Xbox 360. The port was based on the European Dreamcast version and was made available for download on Xbox Live Arcade on July 2, 2008. While the game included HD updated graphics and various Live leaderboards, online play was absent which makes it an exception amongst most games ported to Xbox Live Arcade. Other features from the Dreamcast version (Museum, etc., with the exception of Mission Battle) are also in the game. While the intro is removed from this port, the intro music is still in this port. All content is unlocked by the start of the game. The game is no longer available in the Microsoft Store.

iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)
On January 19, 2012, Namco Bandai released a port of Soulcalibur for Apple's iOS platform. Game modes in this version include Arcade, Time Attack, Survival, Extra Survival, Practice, and Museum mode. The game was released as a Universal App to run at native resolutions on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. The game is no longer available in the iOS store.

Android
On November 20, 2013, Namco Bandai released a port of Soulcalibur for the Android platform. The app makes use of Google Play Games for synchronization between devices and runs at native resolution and screen aspect ratio. The game is no longer available in the Google Play Store.

Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed Soulcalibur on their September 1, 1998 issue as being the third most-successful arcade game of the month.

The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur sold in excess of one million copies by December 1999, and 1.3 million by 2002. It is the second biggest selling game on the system. It won the 1999 E3 Game Critics Award for "Best Fighting Game". At the 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Soulcalibur with "Console Game of the Year" and "Console Fighting Game of the Year" (along with a nomination for "Game of the Year").

Blake Fischer reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for Next Generation, rating it five stars out of five, and stated that "Beautiful, deep, and far more compelling than any 3D fighter in recent memory, Soul Calibur is reason enough to own a Dreamcast."

The game received universal critical acclaim, garnering perfect 10/10 scores from GameSpot and IGN, and was for nearly a decade the last game to receive a perfect rating from IGN, until the release of Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008. It is the second game ever to get a perfect 40/40 from Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu (the first being The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). As of 2017, game review aggregator website GameRankings has the Dreamcast version ranked as the seventh best-reviewed game of all time, as well as being the highest-scoring title in the fighting game genre.

The Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur also holds a score of 98, making it one of the highest-rated video games of all time across all consoles and platforms, on Metacritic.

Retrospective
Soulcalibur was named as the number one best Dreamcast game by Game Informer. In 2009, IGN ranked Soulcalibur as the fifth best Dreamcast game, while ScrewAttack ranked it sixth. GamesRadar named Soulcalibur the best Dreamcast game of all time on their list. In 2005, GameSpot ranked Soulcalibur as the sixth best launch title yet, calling it "not only one of the greatest launch games or one of the greatest fighters, but one of the greatest games ever. Period." In 2022, Cultured Vultures ranked Soulcalibur as the best Dreamcast game of all time.

In addition, it is often considered to be one of the greatest games on all platforms, including:

 * Game Informer (2001): "The Top 100 Games of All Time" (74th place).
 * IGN (2003): "Top 100 Games" (38th place).
 * Retro Gamer (2004): "Top 100 Games" (75th place).
 * IGN (2005): "Top 100 Games" (43rd place).
 * IGN (2006): "Readers' Choice The Top 100 Games Ever" (sixth place).
 * Electronic Gaming Monthly (2006): "The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time" (22nd place).
 * ScrewAttack (2007): "Top Ten Fighting Games" (seventh place).
 * Cinema Blend (2008): "Top 10 Best Fighting Games of All Time" (fourth place).
 * UGO.com (2010): "Top 25 Fighting Games of All Time" (second place).
 * Complex (2011): "The 50 Best Fighting Games of All Time" (fifth place).
 * Game Informer (2019): "30 best fighting game of all time" (third place)

title: Soulcalibur (video game)


text:
Soul Edge

Soul Edge (ソウルエッジ) is a fighting game developed 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.

The plot centers upon the eponymous sword, shrouded in mystery and rumored to offer unlimited power to anyone who can find and wield it; nine warriors embark on a journey to pursue a tenth who is rumored to have the sword, some to claim it and others to destroy it. The game was a commercial and critical success and was followed up with Soulcalibur in July 1998.

Gameplay

Soul Edge was created prior to the introduction of the so-called 8-Way Run. The characters can sidestep to either side by double-tapping down to move to the foreground or tapping down then up to the background. The jump maneuver (which in Soulcalibur is more like a hop) moves the player higher into the air, even allowing it to pass above the opponent (much like in Tekken). The game uses an active block system performed by pressing the block button, and a combat system based on the three attack buttons: horizontal attack, vertical attack, and kick.

Character moves retain a feel of Namco's Tekken series. Each character has one or two slow but unblockable attacks. Each character is also capable of performing one or two "Critical Edge" attacks, consisting of a long series of linked hits, usually ending in a strong high attack. These moves require the input of a special combination of two parts: they are activated by pressing all three attack buttons together, and if it connects, the player has the chance of extending the combo with a character-specific sequence, which must be input during the attack. This attack depletes one-third of the Weapon Gauge when used.

The Weapon Gauge is a life bar for the character's equipped weapon. Each time the player blocks an attack, the bar depletes. If the bar is totally emptied, the weapon is lost and the character is forced to fight unarmed. The unarmed move-lists are the same for every character. Another feature that was removed from Soulcalibur's engine is a rock paper scissors situation when two character strike at the same time, locking their weapons; those who press the correct button have the advantage.

Soul Edge uses an optional offensive block maneuver called the "Guard Impact" that allows players to intercept incoming attacks and push them back, resulting in a momentary opportunity for a free counterattack. Opponents, however, are also able to return a Guard Impact after receiving a Guard Impact, allowing for stalemate clashes until one opponent missed the subsequent timing. This gameplay feature is expanded in future Soul series games.

The game uses the ring out system, which is a forcible maneuver that ejects the opponent from the arena and gains an automatic victory for the round. To achieve a ring out, a character must be knocked outside the ring by an enemy (the player cannot accidentally or deliberately get a ring out by hopping out of the ring). The only exception to this rule is Cervantes and Inferno (known in this game as SoulEdge), who can get a ring out by themselves upon performing a certain special attack, as long as they are near the edge of the arena.

Plot and characters
Soul Edge's events take place in the year 1583. The game tells the tale of warriors searching for the ultimate sword, "Soul Edge". It has been given many names throughout history, such as "The Sword of Salvation", "The Sword of Heroes", and "The Ultimate Sword", among others. Many strong warriors searched for years, but very few actually found it. The sword, currently in the form of a twin pair of long swords, appeared mysteriously in an auction. It was taken by the dreaded pirate Cervantes de Leon and nothing is known of his fate thereafter. Presently, nine warriors from around the world (Hwang, Li Long, Mitsurugi, Rock, Seong Mi-na, Siegfried, Sophitia, Taki, and Voldo) search for the sword for different reasons. Some desire its power, others want revenge. Some, believing that it is a benevolent sword, crave its support. Others, knowing of its evil nature, seek its destruction. Nothing is known for certain about the sword, except for one thing: it brings misfortune to those seeking it. What many do not know is that the sword's power is evil, feeding upon the souls of not only its victims but its wielder as well.

Development and release
Soul Edge was developed as an experiment by Namco to explore the possibilities of a weapon-based fighting game. It was the first motion capture based video game created by using passive optical system markers.

Soul Edge was initially released in arcades in 1995. A Gamest Mook series guide book (GMC-30) was published by Shinseisha on April 30, 1996.

A couple of months later, Namco released a fixed version, labeled Soul Edge Ver. II. Hwang (initially a palette swap of Mitsurugi for the Korean version of the game) was introduced to Japanese players with a new move list, Cervantes became playable, Guard Impacts and Air Combos were implemented, all the characters received upgraded move lists, and new stages were added. The overseas PlayStation version was renamed Soul Blade to avoid potential complications due to EDGE Games' earlier "EDGE" trademark.

PlayStation
On December 20, 1996, Soul Edge was ported to the Sony PlayStation for the Japanese market. A limited special edition came with the Namco Joystick controller. An official tribute book Soul Edge Official Fan Book (ソウルエッジ オフィシャルファンブック／年代記) was published in the Chronicle series by Famitsu on March 31, 1997.

The port kept the Soul Edge Ver. II roster of ten characters and added five unlockable characters, including SoulEdge, the final boss of the game. Other PlayStation-specific features include:
 * A new costume for each character, chosen from various works sent by fans, giving each one a total of three different costumes, plus two color variations for the Player 1 and Player 2 costumes. It also includes—besides the standard Arcade mode—VS mode, Survival, Team Battle, Time Attack, and Training modes.
 * A new RPG-styled mode called Edge Master mode, which works as a kind of story mode for the ten initial characters. The mode presents the selected character's story as a book, while the player moves in a map to various locations and fights in battles, sometimes with handicap rules. Generally, each chapter of the book rewards the player with a weapon.
 * An opening CGI cinematic and individual endings done using the game's engine rather than still images as in its sequels Soulcalibur and Soulcalibur II. Each of the ten normally selectable characters have two endings, usually one happy ending and another tragic ending. These endings are accessible by pressing a special button/button sequence during certain times, indicated by black bars moving away, while others involve a short minigame, such as Mitsurugi avoiding gunshots. This type of ending was finally brought back in Soulcalibur III.
 * The inclusion of seven extra weapons per character, which have different designs and statistics, composed of Power (inflicts more damage), Defense (receives less damage), Strength (damage dealt with enemy's weapon gauge), Durability (resistance of player's weapon gauge), and Weight (changes character's speed). Certain weapons also have a special ability, such as the ability to damage through defense or restore/drain the player's health.
 * The inclusion of three different in-game soundtracks to choose from: the original arcade soundtrack, a studio-recorded version of the arcade soundtrack called "Arrange Soundtrack" and the Khan Super Session, made expressly for the home version.
 * In the English version, all non-Asian characters have their English voice as default. (The concept of speaking different languages was followed by Tekken 4 since the character Julia Chang from Tekken 3 speaks in her ending.)

Versions labeled Soul Blade came out in 1997. In the North American version, clothes were added to Sophitia in the opening cutscene where she would have been nude. In the European version, Li Long's pair of nunchaku were changed to a three-section staff, since BBFC guidelines at the time banned the depiction of nunchaku.

Soundtracks
Two soundtrack CDs were released for the game: Soul Edge Original Soundtrack - Khan Super Session and Super Battle Sound Attack Soul Edge.

Arcade
In Japan, Game Machine listed Soul Edge on their March 15, 1996 issue as being the second most-successful arcade game of the month. On the annual 1996 Gamest chart, Soul Edge was the 20th highest-grossing arcade game in Japan that year. The arcade game was more successful in the United States, where it became one of the top five highest-grossing arcade conversion kits of 1996. Despite this, it was not able to achieve the same level of arcade success as Namco's popular Tekken series. According to Next Generation magazine, Soul Edge "enjoyed less success than it deserved" in arcades.

Next Generation reviewed the arcade version of Soul Edge Version II, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "there is still the slight control delay, but character movement is still fluid and seamless, and the trailing slashes of light in the wake of weapon movement is as gorgeous as ever." The PlayStation conversion, Soul Blade, was a bestseller in the UK. Due to its popularity, the game has been re-released as part of the PlayStation Greatest Hits, the PlayStation Platinum range, and the PlayStation The Best series.

PlayStation
The PlayStation game received very positive reviews. It holds aggregated scores of 91% on GameRankings and 89/100 on Metacritic, including high ratings by IGN ("extremely fun, and has just enough new elements to make it worth playing multiple times"), and GameSpot ("a great fighting game with its share of flaws"). Next Generation praised it for "filling in all the blanks with great gameplay, superb characters, unique graphics, and combines them into one solid package." They later commended the PlayStation port for retaining all the characters, levels, graphics, and gameplay from the arcade version. GameFan called it "without a doubt the most stunning graphical fighting feast ever to grace any console." The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly particularly applauded the full motion video intro and the new story mode. They awarded it "Best Intro" in their 1998 Video Game Buyer's Guide. A reviewer for GamePro stated: "Bow down to the new king of fighters, and the first gotta-play-it game of the year."

In 1997, PSM named Soul Edge as the fourth top game on the PlayStation, and Electronic Gaming Monthly listed the PlayStation version as a runner-up for "Fighting Game of the Year" (behind Street Fighter Collection) and "Best Music" (behind PaRappa the Rapper). PSU listed this game as the sixth "PSone classic" most deserving to be remade for the PlayStation 3 in 2011. That same year, Complex ranked Soul Edge as the 19th best fighting game of all time.

The PlayStation version's opening sequence won the SIGGRAPH '97 award for the best game video of 1996. It was also included on the list of the ten all-time best game cinematics by Cheat Code Central in 2012.

title: Soul Edge


text:
California Über Alles

"California Über Alles" is the debut single by American punk rock band Dead Kennedys. It was the group's first recording and was released in June 1979 on the Optional Music label, with "The Man with the Dogs" appearing as its B-side. The title track was re-recorded in 1980 for the band's first album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, and the original recording as well as the B-side were later included on the 1987 compilation Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death.

Meaning
The lyrics were written by Jello Biafra and John Greenway for their band The Healers. Biafra composed the music in one of his rare attempts at composing on bass.

The title is an allusion to the first stanza of the national anthem of Germany, which begins with the words "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" ("Germany, Germany above everything"). After the end of the Third Reich in 1945, the anthem was shortened to just the third stanza of the original song, as this passage is sometimes associated with Nazism and, in following, claims a large area of land that is no longer contained within the current borders of Germany.

The lyrics are a pointed, satirical attack on Jerry Brown, the Governor of California from 1975 to 1983 (and later 2011–2019), and are sung from his perspective, as an imaginary version of Brown outlines a hippie-fascist vision of America. The line "Serpent's egg already hatched" is a reference to a comment on the corrosive nature of power from William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, and also a reference to the Ingmar Bergman film The Serpent's Egg set in 1920s Berlin that gets its title from the Shakespeare play. The lines "Big Bro on white horse is near" and "now it is 1984" refer respectively to a statement Brown made during his first governorship that Americans were supposedly looking for "a leader on a white horse", and to the totalitarian regime of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to describe a future (from a 1979 perspective) where Jerry Brown has become president, and his "suede/denim secret police" kill "uncool" people in "organic poison gas" chambers.

After the song's initial release, mild confusion arose in the Bay Area music scene as to why Biafra (who was outspoken about his far-left political views) was targeting Jerry Brown (a notably liberal politician for the time). Brown succeeded Ronald Reagan as governor of California, and Reagan was a seemingly more obvious target. However, Biafra frequently expressed his disdain for hippies, and the Dead Kennedys often satirized both left-wing and right-wing politicians.

The song is also an early example of Dead Kennedys' style, with heavy surf rock and militaristic overtones. It begins with sinister military-style drums, joined by an ominous bass riff. Biafra paints the scene in low, sneering tones before bursting into the manic chanted chorus; after two verses and choruses, the song shifts into a slower middle eight section set to a martial drumbeat over which Jello Biafra imagines the nightmarish actions of Brown's SS-styled secret police ("Come quietly to the camp; you'd look nice as a drawstring lamp," a reference to the allegation that lampshades were made from human skin during the Holocaust ). The pace speeds up as it approaches the last iteration of the chorus, closing with a repeated chord sequence accompanied by a final burst of explosive drums.

German-American author Gero Hoschek was inspired by the song to title a 1988 magazine piece about the "Golden State" in the German Zeit Magazin weekly titled "Kalifornia Über Alles!" as well as a never–produced screenplay. Biafra complained, and was provided with a copy of the movie script, which he read and liked; understanding that there was no copyright violation, he gave Hoscheck permission to use the similar name.

Alternative versions
The original, improvised version (containing familiar lyrics but different music performed by the Dancing Assholes and Biafra's first band, The Healers) is included as the final track on the vinyl version of the "Rocky Mountain Low" compilation.

The version recorded for Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables was played slightly faster, featuring a much more strident vocal from Biafra and a fuller, more confrontational sound altogether than the single mix.

On their EP In God We Trust, Inc., they recorded an updated version of the song, titled "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now", about then-President Ronald Reagan, including a lounge-jazz introduction, different lyrics, and several verses set at a much slower pace. A live version of the song was recorded with the instrumentals of the original version of the song.

Jello Biafra has made satirical references to the song in his political advocacy. A speech of his appears on the spoken word album Mob Action Against the State that is entitled "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now: War, Terrorism & Beyond". After the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, Biafra commented, "California Über Alles indeed".

Another updated version of this song about Governor Schwarzenegger, called "Kali-Fornia Über Alles 21st Century", was performed live (among a few other Dead Kennedys classics) when Biafra toured with the band Melvins to support their collaboration album in 2004. A live recording of this new version appears on their second collaborative effort, Sieg Howdy!.

Fans of Dulwich Hamlet F.C. in South London also regularly sing a version of the song as a tribute to their longest-serving manager - Gavin Rose. Many of the words are replaced in this version, e.g. "Dulwich Hamlet" instead of "California".

Cover versions

 * The song was sampled in "Dead Ken Beats" by The Prodigy, and featured in the 2010 film The Social Network.
 * The song was updated by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy when they released a cover version in 1992 on the album Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury. They replaced references to Jerry Brown with references to Pete Wilson.
 * The song was also widely known in Poland (as "Kalifornia Ponad Wszystko") thanks to the cover by Polish rocker Kazik Staszewski with his band Kazik Na Żywo ("Na Żywo Ale W Studio" album, 1994).
 * The band Hasidic New Wave perform a remake of the song on their 1999 album, Kabalogy. In their version, titled "Giuliani Über Alles", Jerry Brown is replaced by former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani.
 * British anarcho-pop group Chumbawamba covered the song in their 1988 album A Night of Punk Nostalgia.
 * The Delgados cover the song in their Peel Sessions CD set.
 * Six Feet Under do a cover the song on their Graveyard Classics album.
 * Deceased covered the song on their punk covers album Rotten to the Core.
 * Hardcore punk band Ceremony has covered the song.
 * John Linnell and his band The Statesmen covered it live at least once during his "State Songs" tour, choosing to perform it because it mentioned the state of California.
 * Dramarama has recorded a version, updated in 2003 about California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger containing the line "You will lift weights in school".
 * A 1986 live recording focused on Ronald Reagan on the album Mutiny On The Bay with live recordings from 1982 and 1986.
 * Jayne County covered the song with She Wolves about California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The green vinyl single was released under artist name Jayne County Meets The She Wolves by the German label Trash 2001.
 * Mexican-American death metal band Brujeria covers Dead Kennedys with the song "California Uber Aztlan" in 2010.
 * German industrial band T.A.S.S. album "Maniafesto" 1994.
 * Greek punk band Panx Romana perform a remake of the song named "Πάρτυ κωφαλάλων" (Party for deaf-mutes) in their 1996 album "Διαγωγή Κοσμία".
 * AJJ's song "Joe Arpaio is a Punk" shares the same opening and closes with an "Arizona über alles" chorus.
 * Top Ranking, a "mixtape" by DJ Diplo x Santogold (Santigold) includes the song "Big Belly Guns" which utilizes the intro to "California über alles". This record was released in 2008.
 * German punk band Die Toten Hosen covered the song, which is included in their cover album 'Learning English: Lesson 2'. The version features the updated lyrics about Governor Schwarzenegger, with many references to his movies and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra sharing vocals with Campino.
 * Hungarian rock band Tankcsapda made a song titled "California über alles" in 2006.
 * Combichrist covered the song on their album One Fire, with lyrics updated with the year 1984 changed to 2024.
 * Thrash metal band Vio-lence released a cover version of this song in 2020.
 * In 1991 czech punk rock band Tři sestry (Czech band) released album Alkáč je největší kocour, aneb několik písní o lásce that consist only of covers. All the songs are not translated, but acoustically similar to the original. California über allesa was dubbed as Na Kovárně, to je nářez.

title: California Über Alles