Dead or Alive a Casual Retrospective Part 1

I think it’s safe to say we’re in a bit of a boon period when it comes to the fighting game genre. It’s far from perfect, lord knows the DLC practices get under a lot of people’s skins, but it’s certainly in a much better position than it was a few years ago. If even Guilty Gear can find big success you know things are looking up.

However, this boon period has only really helped 2D fighting games. 3D fighters are largely a dying art form. Tekken is still around but that’s about it. There aren’t any other major 3D fighters on the market right now. Even my beloved Soulcalibur has now faded into obscurity.

Things are changing though. With Sega announcing that they’re going all in on Virtua Fighter with a brand-new game we could see 3D fighters make a comeback in the same way 2D fighters did with Street Fighter 4. I mean Virtua Fighter is to 3D fighters what Street Fighter is to the 2D.

Only time will tell, but I hope something comes from this. I love fighting games and it makes me sad that the 3D side of the genre has been neglected. I grew up in the 2000’s where 3D fighters were the norm, so it’s a part of the genre I have a lot of nostalgia for.

I loved Tekken, Soulcalibur, the 3D Mortal Kombat games, and the PlayStation 2 Dragon Ball fighter. So I wanted to go back and look at a 3D fighting game series, to try to reconnect with this genre that I love so much. And the series I decided to go with was Dead or Alive.

Why? A few reasons. One is that the entire series is available on Xbox via backwards compatibility, making it easy to look at everything. Second, it’s a series I’ve always been a bit fascinated by. I have a little history with it, but not to the same extent I do for Tekken or Soulcalibur.

I had a cousin with an Xbox and a copy of Dead or Alive 3 that I played it once at his house, I tried the fourth game briefly but didn’t get very far, and I played a lot of Dimensions back in the early 3DS days, mainly because there was very little to play on it at the time. So I’ve dabbled in the series here and there, but never got that into it.  

It’s a series I know little about, but it is one with a history behind it. One that I’ve wanted to look into but never got around to.

Second, it’s a bit more of an obscure series. Ok not obscure per se but it isn’t as well known as something like Tekken or Virtua Fighter or even Soulcalibur arguably. It’s always been a bit more niche and I like learning about these kinds of series.

Although it wasn’t always seen that way. When I was growing up Dead or Alive was viewed as one of the great fighting game franchises. It was in the same discussions as Virtua Fighter and Tekken. It wasn’t as respected as the former or as financially successful as the latter, but the games still reviewed well, sold well and it gained a decently big fan following that persists to this day.

It’s the weird middle child in the 3D fighter trifecta; something that carved its own little niche but then slowly faded further and further into the background. And that’s the third and biggest reason I want to do this. To answer the question, what in the hell happened to it? How did it go from one of the biggest names in fighting games to being largely forgotten by the wider gaming landscape.

I am not completely ignorant on the reasons. The sixth entry was a massive disaster, and some of the spicier elements of the franchise gave the series a bit of an unflattering reputation. But those can’t be the only reasons. A series doesn’t just vanish because of one bad game, there’s got to be more to it than that.

The only way I’m going to solve this mystery is if I go through every game in the series. That way I can see it’s rise and fall for myself. And since Tecmo in an anniversary year, what better time than now to do so.

I should note that for this retrospective I’m only going to be looking at the fighting games, not the spin offs. I will mention those when relevant, since they did hep contribute to the modern perception of the franchise, but I won’t be reviewing them.

Now that I got that out of the way, let’s go over how exactly this series started. Tecmo was a decently popular video game developer in the eighties. While they weren’t as big as giants like Capcom or Konami, they were still able to get by with popular series like Ninja Gaiden and Tecmo Bowl.

But by the nineties the company was struggling to make any kind of headway in either arcades or home consoles. With their old franchises were becoming less relevant due to the shifting gaming landscape. Things were so bad in fact that Tecmo was on the verge of bankruptcy.

With the fate of the company in dire straits, they asked one of their lead programmers, one Tomonobu Itagaki, to develop a game similar to Virtua Fighter. Unsurprising considering how big Sega’s flagship fighting series was in Japan.

Aside from Tecmo wanting to capitalise on Virtua’s success, it would also allow Tecmo to get in on the big 3D boon that was going on in the industry. Thanks to the groundbreaking work of Sega and Namco in arcades, and the success of Sony’s new PlayStation console, 3D was becoming the new industry darling.

Everyone was raving about 3D back then. It was the new hotness that would move the industry forward in a big way, and every company out there was trying to get in on it. With Tecmo being in financial turmoil, they had to go 3D if they had any chance of surviving.

Itagaki, already being a fan of Virtua Fighter, agreed to make the game. He would go on to form his own development team to put the game together. This team would be named Team Ninja, though it wouldn’t actually receive the name until a few years later.

This new fighting game would come to be named Dead or Alive. Named so due to what was riding on it, since it’s failure or success would determine whether Tecmo would wind up dead or alive. It’s sort of like the old rumour behind Final Fantasy’s name except it’s true in this case.

But how to make this new fighter stand out from the many, many, many fighters oversaturating arcades at the time. Well Itagaki had two ways to do so, a fast-paced combat system that emphasised countering, and boobs.

Itagaki is a man of culture you see. He believed that the only way for entertainment to be entertainment was for it to have violence and sex appeal. Therefore, Itagaki’s goal for Dead or Alive was to not only be a fun fighter but to be provocative.

Team Ninja did this by inventing a jiggle physics engine that would cause all the woman’s chests to bounce harder that a coked-up kid on a bouncy castle. Yes folks, Dead or Alive would be a pioneer of breast-based physics in video games. Truly a pioneer for the ages.

The game would release in arcades in 1996 and would release on the Sega Model 2 arcade board. The same board that Virtua Fighter 2 ran on funnily enough. It was actually the first third party game shown off for the hardware after Sega started licencing it out.

The game got rave reviews at the time for its fast-paced gameplay and jaw dropping visuals, and I don’t just mean what you’re thinking of either. It would also prove to be a financial success despite having a limited run in the west. Meaning Tecmo would live to create another day. Mission accomplished.

The game would see a port to the Sega Saturn in 1997 which also got good reviews and sold well, but only in Japan. The Saturn port was never released in the west due to the systems commercial failure there. Mainly due to Sega nuking the launch of the thing and pissing off all the retailers. Look up the Sega Saturn’s launch story sometime, it’s incredible how much Sega dropped the ball.

However, many western players would eventually get to play the Saturn port thanks to Dead or Alive Ultimate. This was a compilation that included updated versions of the first two Dead or Alive games made for the original Xbox. Which is the version I’ll be looking at today.

The Sega Saturn wasn’t the only system to receive Dead or Alive. There was a PlayStation version released in 1999 that did release in the west and is the one most western fans are likely familiar with. However, that version is very different from the original arcade. So much so that’s it’s practically its own game entirely.

Since the Ultimate version is based on the Saturn release which is closer to the arcade, and the one Itagaki has said that he prefers, it makes more sense to cover this one. Although I will come back to the PlayStation version at the end because it is an interesting release.

With all that out of the way, let’s discuss the original Dead or Alive. Or rather Dead or Alive Ultimate, the updated Xbox release. Since we are looking at the Ultimate version, it’s probably best to start by going over what exactly this version is.

To be blunt, it’s a straight port of the Sega Saturn version. That’s it. It’s not a major update or anything, it doesn’t change up the gameplay or give it a major graphical overhaul, it’s simply a port of the original home console release with slightly updated visuals.

It’s the same experience as it was in 1997 warts and all. This may sound disappointing, and I guess it would be for some, but Dead or Alive Ultimate was made largely for Xbox players introduced to the series with Dead or Alive 3. Plus, the Sega Saturn version was Japan exclusive, so this version was new for a lot of players in 2005.

Still, this is essentially a Sega Saturn game on an Xbox disk. I’m guessing this is why it was released as a combo pack with Dead or Alive 2 and not as a separate release; it would have been a hard sell otherwise. Though it is a separate release on the Xbox store due to the two being separate disks. Which sucks but what can you do.

Anyway, because this is essentially a Sega Saturn game, that means you shouldn’t expect any of the kinds of major single-player modes you see in a lot of modern fighting, or many modes in general for that matter.

You have the standard arcade and vs modes, a survival mode, and a time attack. Nothing too exciting and that’s the problem. Dead or Alive 1 doesn’t offer much interesting in terms of content, and what it does offer lacks a lot of replay value.

The only interesting mode is Kumite. This pits you off against a large onslaught of opponents, from 30 to 100, to see how many you can beat. It’s fine, but since there’s only 8 characters in the game it gets repetitive quickly.

There was also an online mode added to Ultimate, but given this port is 20 years old I doubt it works anymore. It was cool it had it back then, but it’s practically worthless now. This is why you need strong single player content folks. When the online goes down what else are you going to do.

None of the modes are bad. They’re all tried and tested modes that have worked in many fighting games before. They just don’t have a lot of longevity. Once you’ve played them once you’ve seen everything they have to offer, and there isn’t anything about them that makes you want to keep going back to them.

I mean even arcade mode is dull since you fight the same opponents in the same order. There’s no randomness to it like in every other fighting game. It makes playing through multiple times a chore since it’s the same experience every time.

You can change the order via an unlockable setting, but why would that even be unlockable, it should be there by default. How do you screw up an arcade mode, it’s the most basic thing to get right.

So, what we have here is a bare bones port that doesn’t have a lot to offer in terms of content. But to be fair to it, this was standard for the time. A lot of fighting games offered these exact same modes and very few had anything as robust as what we have today.

You need to keep in mind that most fighting games were designed around the arcade environment. They weren’t meant to offer the robust, long-lasting experiences you got on consoles; they were meant to be quick pick up and play experiences that you played for a few minutes before moving on to the next one.

A lot of home console ports for fighting games were sold mostly on them being the arcade game at home. For most consumers that was enough; the convenience alone made them an easy sell. Why go all the way to your local arcade to pay fifty pounds worth of change into Street Fighter 2 when you can spend the same money on the Super Nintendo version and play it at home with your mates whenever you want. That’s just common sense.

There’s also the fact that many of these ports were for weaker hardware. Arcades in the nineties were far more powerful than home consoles. It was the place where a lot of the big technical achievements in gaming happened, including the 3D revolution.

Even in the 3D era where the power difference was becoming less and less noticeable, there was still a gap in power between the two. Because of that a lot of the development work on these ports was spent on making sure the games ran well on the systems.

They had to make a lot of compromises to get them in the home. Dead or Alive was no exception. In arcades it had fully 3D backgrounds, but that couldn’t be done on Saturn, so they had to use 2D backgrounds instead. These kinds of compromises were what needed to be done to make it playable on the Saturn’s hardware.

This is why a lot of arcade ports didn’t were lacking in content. They didn’t have time to add much because they had to spend more time on making sure the games were playable while looking and feeling as close to the original arcade as possible.

Some fighting game ports did offer plenty of content. Tekken and Rival Schools had tons of additional modes and unlockables, I mean the Japanese version of Rival Schools had an entire school simulator for crying out loud. But those games were released on arcade boards that were more or less identical to the original PlayStation.

Therefore, they could spend more time adding additional modes and story content because porting them was much easier and more importantly cheaper. It’s easy to add more when it costs less.

Those were the exception to the rule though. It’s hard to compare Dead or Alive to those since it didn’t have the same advantages. It’s much better to compare it to the home port of Virtua Fighter 2 on Saturn which had similar compromises and selection of modes.

It’s easy to look at Dead or Alive from a modern lens and say it’s lacking, but when judged from the standards of its day it’s perfectly acceptable. I can’t say what it offers is bad because it isn’t; it’s just offering the arcade game at home which for a lot of people was all they needed.

And it’s not like it doesn’t have any replay value. Every character has a bunch of unlockable costumes for beating arcade mode with them multiple times, and there’s extra settings you can unlock that can change up the gameplay in wild and wacky ways. The game doesn’t tell you how to get them, but that’s what the internet is for.

So it has plenty to unlock, but there still isn’t much to see past the first couple of hours. Each run of arcade mode will only take you a half hour to complete, and you can easily lower that time by simply switching to one round matches, which still lets you unlock things.

You can unlock everything major in less than two hours. After that there isn’t much to make you come back to it. The unlockable costumes are nice, but I don’t feel like playing arcade mode over and over to get them. That just sounds tedious.

There is the vs mode where you can play with friends, which is where most fighters get their longevity, but I don’t think you’ll find many people willing to play the first Dead or Alive for more than a few minutes.

Spoilers, but this game is rough to play. At the time I can imagine you might be able to rope some people to play a few rounds, but these days with all the different options available… Good luck with that.

I will say that in terms of the quality of the port, it’s pretty damn good. Dead or Alive in arcades was a visual showpiece in its day and the Saturn version holds up surprisingly well when compared to it.

The lack of full 3D backgrounds is a shame, but the character models are great and are animated fantastically. Like a lot of 3D fighting games, it used motion capture for the animations, and they look smooth in motion. This is some of the best animation from a 3D fighter of the era I’d say.

The Ultimate version does upscale the visuals, but aside from looking slightly smoother I can’t see much of a difference when comparing footage between the two. The Saturn version looked clean already, which is impressive considering it wasn’t a system built for 3D.

Ultimate doesn’t do much to update the visuals. A shame considering the Xbox was more than powerful enough to handle the original arcade game. Which raises the question of why they didn’t just port that.

My guess is that they wanted to keep all the modes from the Saturn version, and porting that over was the easiest way to do so. It’s just a shame that we have never seen the arcade properly brought to home consoles and likely never will.

Also wasn’t this supposed to be the ULTIMATE version. Shouldn’t it be the most graphically enhanced version of the game, even more so than the arcade version. Bit of false advertising there.

It would have been nice for the Xbox version to take more advantage of the hardware, but as a Saturn game it doesn’t look half bad, and it runs at a stable 60fps too which a lot of 3D Saturn games struggled with. Again, for a system not really built for 3D they got a lot out of it.

The music isn’t bad either. It’s the kind of soundtrack that lets you know the time the game came out in; it’s got what I can only describe as a late 90’s arcade sound. You know that kind of heavy techno/rock sound that a lot of arcade games had back then.

It’s hard to describe, but you’ll recognise it when you hear it. It’s good stuff, though it comes more from the general vibe of the soundtrack than the tracks themselves. They aren’t bad, they just aren’t as memorable as other fighting game tracks are.

The presentation is honest pretty great. It looks and sounds fantastic for the time, and while the Saturn version was a step down visually from the arcade it still holds up well. Plus, it did have one thing the arcade didn’t, a CG intro.

It didn’t have endings, or any kind of story for that matter, but it still made time for a full CG intro. I love old fighting game intros so let’s check this out.

Alright, not half bad. It’s got a bopping music track that gets you hyped up, plenty of action, it shows off most of the characters and the CG quality is good for the time. It ticks all the boxes for a good fighting game intro.

Two things stood out to me though. One, they really hate Zack. Or at least that’s the impression I get because he gets the ever-loving shit kicked out of him. Of all the characters he’s the one they beat up the most. Sure he gets his licks in but that doesn’t change the fact the intro seems hellbent on bullying him. What the fuck did he do to deserve this.

Second was the naked model of Kasumi barely obscured by a thin fog layer. Ok, I can’t ignore this anymore, let’s talk about the fanservice.

If you were to ask any fighting game fan to describe Dead or Alive, there’s a good chance they’d call it the fanservice fighting game. This is a series that wears its cheesecake on its sleeve. As we went over Itagaki wanted the game to be provocative and have attractive female characters with huge tracts of land to attract the attention of arcade goers.

And you know what, there is nothing wrong with that. Sex sells after all, and Dead or Alive is far from the only video game to use sex appeal to sell itself. But for some people that is still a problem.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the sexualisation of video game characters. It’s not a good discussion since it always devolves into a shit flinging contest, but it is still a discussion people are at least trying to have.

Some claim it’s degrading to women, or men in some instances, and that it sets video games back as an art form. Others don’t seem to care but also have an issue with the “uglification of women” in games while propping up very overly sexualised women as an example of what video game women should look like.

In short, you have pretentious activists on one side and coomers on the other. Which annoys me to no end because sexualisation in video games is a topic that needs to be discussed. There is a debate to be had about when and where it’s appropriate and how much of it should be allowed.

My own stance is that I don’t have any problem with it, so long as the sexualisation isn’t all that they offer. This has been an issue with a lot of fan service heavy media. Some series will put so much emphasis on the fan service it forgets to have any actual substance.

It’s what separates something like Kill la Kill from Ikki Tousen. One has fan service that actually adds to its story and themes, and the other is just an excuse to see some TNA barely held together by a nonsensical retelling of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Basically, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. People will sometimes use fanservice as a critique, but that isn’t always fair. It only becomes a critique if it’s done badly. Like if the sexualisation of the characters is taken too far and becomes problematic. You know like when the characters are underage; I don’t care if age of consent laws are different in other countries it’s still not ok to sexualise a child.

But for the most part there’s nothing wrong with having a little fanservice. Everyone likes watching attractive characters, especially when said attractive characters are total badasses. Look at Lara Croft for example. You think she would be anywhere near as popular if she wasn’t attractive? I don’t think so.

Her looks are one of the biggest reasons she stood out, but she also had the substance of being a badass treasure hunter to go along. This is why characters like Lara Croft and Samus Aran are still around, while the cast of Senran Kagura are mostly forgotten. Because the latter don’t have any substantive character to go along with the fan service. It’s just TNA for the sake of TNA.

Dead or Alive, thankfully, does not have this problem. The female characters are attractive and there’s clearly a lot of fanservicey elements to them, but they’re also very badass. They have cool move sets and, ok I can’t exactly say they have a ton of personality, but they do have a personality.

Admittedly though I can chalk that last point to the lack of a story and not being able to understand the dialogue. It’s the same problem Virtua Fighter suffers from. Their victory animations give them some characterization but that’s about all you get.

My point is, they aren’t just a pretty face. They do have actual character that makes them more than just visual eye candy. And if I’m being honest, the designs aren’t even that provocative.

When I think of overly sexual character designs in fighting games, I think of characters like Ivy Valentine from Soulcalibur, or Mai Shiranui from King of Fighters, hell even Street Fighter has more lewd designs than this. Just look at Laura from Street Fighter 5, whoever designed her had an extreme thirst.

Dead or Alive’s designs aren’t nearly as bad as those. But maybe it’s best to use a visual comparison. Here’s Kasumi from DOA.

Here’s Ivy Valentine.

And here’s Mai.

You tell me which designs are lewder.

Now admittedly a lot of the unlockable outfits are a little more on the risqué side. You’ve got maid outfits, schoolgirl outfits, cat girl costumes, because of course it would be those specifically, there is still sex appeal to these designs make no mistake, but those are all optional and not the main default designs most associated with the characters.

I have seen much, much worse when it comes to this stuff. Yes, there are up skirt shots a plenty, but that’s about as bad as it gets. And let’s not act like this thing was new to fighting games. Even early on you had characters like Cammy in her skin-tight leotard that went up her ass, and of course you had Mai in all her lewd glory.

So why does Dead or Alive get the reputation as the fan service fighter, when fanservice has been part of the genre for years. Well a big part of it is that Dead or Alive is more upfront with it than most.

I mean the game is famous for popularising the use of jiggle physics. It wasn’t the first game to use it, but it was the first to be so blatant in showing it off. Not that I’m complaining about that, but that kind of thing is going to turn heads you know what I mean. Though these days I’d say heads turn for how comical it is.

Seriously I have no idea why they considered this sexy. The girls’ chests bounce harder than Flubber on a trampoline. It’s hilarious not sexy. I honestly find it more distracting than anything else. You do have an option to turn it off if you want, but why would you do that you uncultured swine.

It could also be that in Dead or Alive every female character has some fanservice attached to them. Most fighting games with multiple female characters usually have at least one that isn’t heavy on showing off their femineity.

King of Fighters may hay Mai and B. Jenet, but it also has characters like King, Leona, Yuri and Vanessa. Not that those characters aren’t attractive, but their designs are clearly not as overtly sexual as Mai or Jenet can be. I mean have you seen B Jenet’s rack in City of the Wolves, that bitch could smother a man to death with a light cuddle.

But in Dead or Alive all the female characters are sexualised to some degree. They all have rubber bras on and jiggle like a lava lamp. It’s hard to ignore the jiggling when all the girls are doing it is all I’m saying.

Honestly though, this is all harmless. I don’t think it degrades women because it’s so ridiculous you can’t take it seriously, and the game itself doesn’t even attempt to take itself serious anyway.

That’s another thing, I think you can get away with fan service if you have fun with yourself. Look at Resident Evil. The older games did have a little fan service in them which didn’t stand out too much due the series b-movie tone. They were a little silly and they knew that, so they threw in a little fanservice here and there since it didn’t clash with the tone of the game.

But the recent Resident Evils have gone in a darker more serious direction. It’s trying to take the actual story seriously now and trying to avoid the goofier excesses of the franchise’s past. So, they’ve toned the fanservice down since it wouldn’t fit with the new tone they’re going for.

It’s a case-by-case thing. Some games just wouldn’t get away with it since it would stick out too much, while others can throw it in and no one would bat an eye. I mean some people might, but those kinds of people never have any fun.

So, is the fan service eye catching? Yes, but not in the way they intended these days. Does it detract from the game? No not really. It’s honestly just kind of there. I’ve seen plenty of worse examples of fan service in games that do get in the way of my enjoyment of it.

But is it blatant? Oh, fuck yeah. It is up front with what it’s trying to be and will not shy away from it. It knows it wants fan service, and it gives it to you in spades, but it never takes it so far that it becomes seedy or embarrassing. I wouldn’t mind people walking in on me while I’m playing this.

Strangely though, in its own weird way, Dead or Alive ended up being kind of progressive. To make the sex appeal more apparent in marketing, Tecmo made the main character a girl. The ninja girl Kasumi would become the face of the franchise, making Dead or Alive the only mainstream fighting game series with a female lead. Outside games with an all-female cast anyway.

Even if it was done for sex appeal, this is something that makes the game stand out in a positive way. It’s actually kind of empowering. Believe it or not women like watching attractive women doing cool things just as much as guys do. Ok maybe not as much but still.

I know I went on a long tangent about this, but you need to address this head on when talking about this series. I’m not even done yet, I’m probably going to come back to this topic a lot in this retrospective because it does change as the series goes on, just wait until 5 because Jesus Christ it gets stupid, but for now I think we should move on.

After all this talk about bouncing booba we should finally talk about the actual fighting. I mean this is a fighting game after all; the combat is the big draw of the game. Sadly for Dead or Alive, that draw is far less impressive today than it was in 1997.

This game is a prime example of first game syndrome. By the standards of its time, Dead or Alive isn’t all that bad, but there’s simply no getting around the fact that it doesn’t hold up.

I will say that Dead or Alive does hold up better than most first entry fighting games. I’d much rather play this over Tekken 1, but that’s like saying I’d rather be punched in the face than be kicked in the balls. One may be more desirable, but I wouldn’t want either to happen.

It all comes down to the game feel. If a game doesn’t feel good to play then you’re going to have bad time, and Dead or Alive 1 does not feel good to play. It’s stiff, clunky and so slow that it makes the simple act of playing the game a hassle.

I will say that there is a flow to the combat that can make it enjoyable if you find it. The problem is that the overall control and movement are so stiff and clunky that it makes finding that groove very difficult if not outright impossible.

The control is at least responsive. Attacks come out fast and the button layout and overall controls are simple to learn. It’s easy to pick up and understand the basic mechanics without needing a tutorial.

After about ten minutes in training mode, I figured most of the mechanics out. If there is something I missed, some nuances the game doesn’t tell you about, it probably wasn’t anything important since I got through the game without them.

One downside with playing this digitally is you don’t have a manual. This is something I miss from older games; manuals were a great way to learn about the games story, characters and story before you started plating them or learn things the actual game didn’t.

I know you can look this up on the internet, but it’s not the same. Plus, I shouldn’t have to rely on an outside source to learn something about a game. It should be in the game itself. Dead or Alive Ultimate doesn’t have a tutorial, so you had to either figure it out on your own or read the manual. Which I do not possess, so I have to just hit buttons and find shit out.

I can’t hold it against this game since I’m playing this years later in a format it was never intended to be played in. Plus, unless you’re a hardcore tournament player you don’t need to learn the advanced stuff. The basic things are easy to pick up and that’s all you need.

The only part of the control that tripped me up at first was being unable to use the analogue stick. Only the D-Pad works. This is likely a quirk of the game being a Sega Saturn port. The Saturn controller didn’t have an analogue stick so I’m guessing the original port was hard coded to only work with a D-Pad.

I find the Xbox’s D-Pad comfortable to use so I didn’t mind this too much, but keep in mind this was made with the original Xbox in mind. I can’t imagine this was comfortable with the duke. You know the original Xbox controller that was designed for gorillas. I guess that’s one benefit to playing it today, you get to play it with a controller that’s actually comfortable to hold.

The game uses a three-button system; there’s a button for punches, kicks and holds, with moves and combos being done by combining different buttons and performing directional commands. You know basic fighting game stuff.

I don’t think I need to explain what punch and kick does, those are self-explanatory, but hold is where things get interesting. Hold is essentially a counter button. By pressing it at the right time you can counter an opponent’s attack with one of your own.

It’s a cool idea that adds a unique defensive mechanic to the gameplay and would go on to be a defining aspect to the franchise. There’s a lot of different types of holds you can learn too, so there’s a little more depth to the system than just one button counters. In theory anyway. While the hold system is an interesting idea it isn’t as fleshed out as it should be.

There aren’t many options for after you counter an opponent. It doesn’t stun them long enough for you to take advantage of them, and while there are multiple different types of holds it’s hard to make use of them when playing single player due to this games piece of shit, input reading AI. Making learning the system difficult.

It's a good starting point for this kind of system, but it needs more fleshing out. Which is how I feel about the combat in general. There’s a good fighting game here, but it’s very rough around the edges. Like a lot of first entries, they were still figuring things out while they were making it so it doesn’t quite come together like it should.

In that regard I suppose I can’t be too hard on it. But even taking this being the first game into account doesn’t change the fact the game just isn’t fun to play. While the actual controls are easy enough to figure out, there’s still an overt stiffness that’s hard to work around.

The two biggest problems are the movement and throws. First movement sucks, the characters feel like they have arthritis. The default walking speed is unbearably slow. Like slower than a snail moving through molasses levels slow. Sloths move faster than these guys.

You’re basically dependent on dash if you want to get anywhere, and that only works when it feels like. Also, your ability to move on a z axis is limited at best, so there isn’t much 3D movement in this 3D fighting game.

It’s not fun to move in this game, which is kind of a big fucking problem. If the basic act of moving isn’t fun, then it makes it very hard to enjoy the rest of the game.

Then there’s throwing. Let me ask you this, how does throwing work in fighting games? 3D fighters specifically. Well, it works by pressing two buttons together, which is followed by an animation of the character trying to grab the opponent and if successful you throw them on the ground. I haven’t played every 3D fighter, there could be some that do it differently, but the ones I have played do this.

Well Dead or Alive got the first part right, but it forgets the second. Whenever you press the button combination for throwing it won’t perform a grabbing animation and will instead just throw out a normal attack.

Some holds and command throws do a grabbing animation, but regular throws have no feedback whatsoever. It makes it hard to tell if you’re doing them properly. It also doesn’t help that the throw range is so small you need to be practically in the opponents face just to land one.

With how fast the game is, and with how much AI predicts your moves, I find throwing to be outright useless. You’re better off just using strikes, which makes playing grapplers harder than usual. Although I think the reason might be due to the hold system.

A lot of the holds in this game act as throws themselves, and those are often much easier to pull off. I guess it makes sense since holds are a throw in real life, but it makes throws feel superfluous.

Maybe that’s also why holds are limited, because they have also have to act as grabs. I think that’s the idea, that the hold button is meant to be both a counter and a throw, but if that’s the case why have a separate type of throw at all. It just makes it confusing.

Dead or Alive is a difficult game to go back to. It’s clunky to play and the systems are too simple and not all that well thought out. In short, it’s aged, and it’s aged badly. I know it was the first in the series and 3D does tend to age worse than 2D, but that doesn’t change the fact that playing this game in the year of our lord 2025 is painful.

All that said, there is a framework for a good fighting game here. When things click and you start doing combos and learn the hold system it can be fun, it’s just very rare when that happens, and while its ideas need work, they are still really good ideas.

The hold system is a great concept. The entire idea of having a dedicated counter mechanic is something that makes the gameplay unique. It’s also very ahead of its time considering a lot of later fighting games would have an emphasis on defensive mechanics, like Street Fighter 3’s parry system.

Another idea I really liked was the stage design. Like a lot of early 3D fighters, it has large arenas that let you knock the opponent out to win. Though Dead or Alive took it a step further by having danger tiles that explode when you know an opponent onto them for extra damage or even a juggle opportunity.

This is awesome. I love this kind of stage interactivity in fighting games. It’s one of the reasons Mortal Kombat X is a personal favourite of mine. It’s a little simple in Dead or Alive, all the stages have the same layout so there isn’t much variety, but this feature would go on to be a hallmark for the series and the sequels would greatly expand on the concept.

And Dead or Alive’s roster is solid. While there are only eight characters to pick from, they all have distinct move sets, cool designs, fun though limited personalities, and their own backstory and motivations.

I know I said the game doesn’t have a story, but that only applies to the story in game. There is a plot it’s just told in the manual and lore. The story is that a company named DOATEC, which stands for Dead or Alive Tournament Executive Committee, is hosting a fighting tournament to determine the world’s strongest fighter.

Not much of a plot but it’s a fighting game so I’ll let it slide. It’s little more of an excuse to why these guys are beating the shit out of each other. Later games would expand on the plot, but this first game keeps things simple.

Anyway, let’s talk about the characters. First up is the main girl Kasumi. The daughter of the leader of the Mugen Tenshin Ninja Clan and trained Kunoichi, Kasumi enters the tournament to take revenge on her uncle Raidou after he crippled her brother Hayate.

As the games poster child, Kasumi is one of the easiest characters to learn. She has a lot of combo strings that come out fast and have great mix up potential. She’s one of the stronger fighters in the game and her move set is easy to learn, so I’d pick her to start with.

Next is Zack, the games resident punching bag and professional Dennis Rodman impersonator. He’s a DJ and kickboxer who enters the tournament for money. As a kickboxer so he’s all about the legwork. He’s got great range with his kicks and can get big damage even from short combo strings.

Mind you a lot of other characters can do that due to how ludicrous the damage in this game is. Damage values in this game are so high that you can win with just one or two well timed combos. It’s a little funny how busted it is; until it happens to you and then it becomes annoying.

Hayabusa is the next character. He’s a ninja and friend of the Mugen Tenshin clan who enters the tournament to test his skills. He plays very similar to Kasumi, though he’s a bit more technical and difficult to learn with stance moves and a chain throw that leads to an Izuna drop. Because you aren’t a ninja in a fighting game without an Izuna drop.

If the name Hayabusa sounds familiar, that’s because it’s Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden. They added him as a guest character, and he would go on to be a series mainstay. And it was thanks to his appearance in Dead or Alive that lead to Itagaki reviving the series with the 3D Ninja Gaiden reboot. With both it and Dead or Alive would incorporate elements of each other as they went on.

I’m not sure about the canonicity of them though. The consensus among fans is that the Ninja Gaiden reboot serves as a prequel to Dead or Alive, but there hasn’t been any statement confirming that. And it also gets confusing with Ninja Gaiden 3 which takes place after Dead or Alive apparently, and then there’s Yaiba too which is just this weird red headed step child that doesn’t fit in anywhere.

It’s a mess. There hasn’t been an official timeline so it’s all up in the air on how they’re connected. It could very well be a King of Fighters situation where both are a separate continuity that integrate elements of each other but remain separate.

I don’t know for sure, but it is cool that you have two series like this running concurrently while crossing over with each other. And maybe that’s all it needs to be.

Bayman is the next character. He’s a mercenary who has infiltrated the tournament to assassinate the DOATEC chairman Fame Douglas. Why? No idea. Without any in game story there’s little explanation to what is going on.

Bayman is the games big-bodied bruiser archetype. He’s slow but he hits hard, and he can also act as a grappler with a set of chain throws. Since throws suck in this game, you’ll have a tough time getting those chain throws off, but at least he has powerful blows to compensate.

Lei Fang is up next and she’s our Chinese kung fu chick. Because every fighting game series needs its own Chun-li equivalent. She enters the tournament to defeat Jann Lee who we’ll get to later. Again, I have no idea why because the game doesn’t explain dick. Really hoping the next game gives me more to talk about.

Like Kasumi, Lei has access to a lot of fast combo strings and has very good juggle potential, but she’s a bit more technical. You’ll need a little more precision and timing to get the most out of her. I think she also has the smallest health in the game, but with damage being the way it is that’s hard to tell. She’s not as easy as Kasumi, but she’s still a good pick for beginners.

From the series resident kung fu gal, to the resident old kung fu master we have Gen-fu. He enters the tournament to earn money to help cure his granddaughter’s illness. Ok well that’s something a little more interesting.

Gen-fu is by far the hardest character to play as. Take the precision of Lei Fang but make her slower and more focused on command moves and you have Gen-fu. He’s the character I enjoyed playing the least, but he does hit very hard in the right hands.

Tina Armstrong is our third and final lady. She’s a wrestler from America who wants to break out and become an actress. So she enters the tournament so she can get scouted by Hollywood. Weird way to do it, but maybe she wants to be an action star.

Given she’s a wrestler it shouldn’t surprise you that Tina serves as the game’s main grappler. Focusing on throws and holds but also having a fair number of powerful strikes, like her flying butt attack. Are you really surprised that she has that.

She’s probably the character that suffers the most from the games poor throw system, but she still has a couple of decent command throws that help her game plan a bit. I like Tina, but this is not the right game for her.

Credit where it’s due though, Tina is unique as the series trademark grappler. In most games the wrestler archetype is a big burly muscle dude, since that’s the image people have of wrestlers. So Tina being a girl, and not even a big muscle girl but just a regular athletic woman, helps her stand out.

You don’t see a lot of female wrestlers in fighting games. The only other one I can think of is R Mika from Street Fighter, it’s a woefully underused archetype. It’s weird because women’s wrestling is big in Japan, a lot bigger than in the west where it’s seen as little more than eye candy, thank you attitude era, so you’d think there’d be more examples of them.

But no, there’s not that many of them. In fact, I think Tina was the first one. See what I mean about it being progressive; they were breaking down boundaries even if they didn’t intend to. Good for you Tina.

And finally, we have Jann Lee. A bouncer looking to test himself and the series own “I can’t believe it’s not Bruce Lee”. I mean he has the Jeet-Kune-Do fighting style, he’s got several of Bruce Lee’s moves like the flying kick, even his name is a reference to Bruce Lee’s actual name, Lee Jun Fan. You can’t get much more Buce lee than that.

Jann is my favourite character. He’s easy to understand, hits hard, has great combo strings, can do a flying dragon kick which is always cool to see, he’s just a blast to play.

While Jann Lee is the final character to start, there is one more character with the game’s final boss Raidou. He’s an exiled ninja from Kasumi’s clan who seeks to become stronger by stealing the moves of others. He’s basically diet Akuma mixed with Dural from Virtua Fighter.

You can unlock Raidou as a playable character by beating arcade mode with everyone else, though he lacks a move list so good luck figuring him out. Having a mix of the different characters moves is fun, but it also makes him forgettable as there’s nothing that makes him stand out. Honestly, he’s a pretty lame final boss.

In typical final boss fashion, he’s cheap as hell too. I alluded to this earlier but the AI in this game is atrocious; it reads you’re inputs like mad and makes doing any kind of cool shit near impossible. It’s not the worst fighting game AI, that dishonour goes to Children of the Atom, but it certainly isn’t fun to fight against.

So not a bad roster all things considered. They have different playstyles, and while a lot of it is very archetypical, they do give them their own unique identity. Except Raidou, he’s just Akuma we have at home. I don’t know how balanced it is since some characters did seem more powerful than others, but nobody seemed too busted from what I can tell.

But while the roster is decent, the only characters I enjoyed playing as were Kasumi and Jann Lee. Everyone else I was hot and cold on and a lot of that is that I just don’t like playing the game. I can only enjoy the characters so much when the gameplay makes me want to pull teeth.

I can see why the game did well in 1997, it’s not a bad fighting game for its time and there’s even a lot of inspired ideas, but the mechanics aren’t fully fleshed out, the control never feels right, the AI is actively unfun to fight against, and there’s almost nothing to do in it.

Yes, there are things to appreciate. The presentation is great and there is a certain mid-nineties arcade charm to it. I can see why some people would have fond memories of this, but as someone who played this first in 2025, I don’t have the same nostalgic bias, and without that the cracks in this armour are too glaring to ignore.

I can see a good fighting game here, but there are too many issues holding it back. Yes, a lot of that is due to its age, and it was the first game in the series so I can’t be too harsh on it, but I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass about it either. Dead or Alive Ultimate sucks.

There is no reason to go back to the first Dead or Alive. Even most fans admit that it’s the worst entry in the series. Even back in 2005 when Ultimate came out critics said that Dead or Alive 1 Ultimate was basically just a collector’s item. It was the sequel they said was the one to buy the collection for.

Now you can get Dead or Alive 1 Ultimate for about ten quid on the Xbox store. That’s not a bad price for what the game offers, but I can’t say it’s worth it. Unless you’re a massive fan or just curious to see how the series started you can skip this one.

Before we go though, let’s quickly talk about that PlayStation port. Rather than be a straight up port, the PS1 version is a weird hybrid update/sequel. It changed the stages to be more like Tekken’s infinite scrolling kind and included extra mechanic and characters.

That version was later brough to arcades as Dead or Alive++. The funny thing is the mechanics and characters it added were meant for the sequel. The PS1 version came out in 1998, and the sequel came out a year later and had to have already been in development at the time.

Meaning this version is almost a preview for the sequel. it’s sort of like when Luke was added as the final DLC character in Street Fighter 5 to preview his appearance as the main character in Street Fighter 6. Only imagine if Luke in 5 also had the Drive gauge and could do all the stuff you could do in 6, that’s what Dead or Alive on PS1 is.

I think the consensus is this version is better. The few people who claim Dead or Alive 1 is there favourite cite this version particularly, so I guess if you must play this game try to find the PS1 version.

But given how much it took from the sequel, maybe you should just play that instead. That will be what we look at next, and if what I’ve gathered is correct, we should be in for a good time. Because while the first Dead or Alive put the series on the map, the sequel took it to the stratosphere.