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On The History Of Dead Or Alive

Posted by simoniker on from the with-the-kicking-and-the-punching dept.

Thanks to IGN Xbox for its article documenting the history of Tecmo's Dead Or Alive fighting game franchise. The piece discusses the "series that brought [Ninja Gaiden developer] Tecmo from an underrated developer to one of the most popular companies in the industry", focusing on titles including Dead Or Alive 2 ("...introduced many concepts that have yet to be fully utilized in other fighting games") and the forthcoming Dead Or Alive Ultimate ("All the buzz is around the online play at this moment, and whether or not Team Ninja will be able to pull it off successfully.") TeamXbox also has an interview with Tecmo's delightfully deranged Tomonobu Itagaki, who declares: "To be thrown off of a cliff by an ugly opponent might make you feel bad even if the fight was fair, but to be thrown off by a beautiful woman... that should make you feel good about losing."

4 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. How can you mention Dead or Alive... by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How can you mention Dead or Alive without mentioning Xtreme Beach Volleyball? So far as I remember, this holds the entirely laudible distinction of being the only X-box-only game to have made it into the Japanese top 10. It probably also holds some kind of record for the number of derogatory jokes it's inspired.

    The weird thing is that it isn't actally that bad a game, nor is the content particularly shocking. It's... like... girls in bikinis. You've seen worse on Baywatch. In fact, here in the UK, you can walk into a newsagent and buy worse in a mainstream tabloid newspaper (eg. The Sun, The Star) and those are sold for a few pence each with no age restrictions. I guess it's a good illustration of how double-standards apply to video-games.

    1. Re:How can you mention Dead or Alive... by Singletoned · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Couldn't agree more.

      I thought DoA:XBV was a wonderful game, and quite an original one at that. It was very peaceful with no real objective or aim. You just wandered through the game playing a bit of volleyball, looking around the island and collecting swimsuits and items.

      When it came out I had a weeks holiday from work and bought loads of games (DoA:XBV, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Metroid Prime, and a few others), intending to play them that week and then take them back for a refund at the end of the week. I ended up playing DoA:XBV all week as it was so captivating.

  2. Re:If only... by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The story goes that when they got an Xbox dev kit, they ported over the PS2 version of DOA2 (which didn't even look as good as the Dreamcast version) to the point where it ran, then sat back in amazement as it ran at over 130 frames per second.

    --
    Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  3. Re:If only... by AliasTheRoot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'll attest to this, the DC version of dead or alive 2 is far better than the ps2 one, just the same as soul calibur is better than soul calibur 2.

    Still apart from this beach ball game and project gotham, there's nothing i want to play on the xbox (and i have msr on the dreamcast), so spending 200 on the opportunity to have a console with a crappy controller and more hassle with scart cables doesnt appeal.