Retro Friday #10: Dead or Alive

Woo, made it to an anniversary of sorts, and of course it is another happy Friday! This one is particularly special because we have a new year coming up, which means a few more moments to relax.

Being the fool that I am, I didn't even prepare a special festive fighting game for this episode, and I'm not sure one like that even exists. There are sweet Christmas themed stages in Street Fighter and Tekken, and I know you can play Santa in Fight of Gods, but there was never a truly jolly fighting game as far as I'm aware.

Instead, I am offering you a 3D fighting game from the mid-90s that offered a simple yet deep gameplay system that would eventually evolve into watching girls play volleyball...

Feast your eyes on Dead or Alive.

Dead or Alive was a bit late to the party, but it was still among the earliest 3D fighters to spawn in response to the overwhelming success of Virtua Fighter. On the surface, it's easy to discard this game as a Virtua Fighter ripoff. The controls look the same, the general premise is the same, they swapped ring outs for danger zones, and their presentation is largely similar, putting more focus on realism and real martial arts than your average fighter.

However, it wouldn't be a Tomonobu Itagaki joint if it didn't do something new and cool, that's just not his style. His direction for Dead or Alive was fairly clear, sex and violence. Despite mostly male roster, this game was extremely honest about itself. Subtlety goes out the window when your game has a literal "bouncing breast" setting as one of the key game options.

And by god, "bouncing" is a severe understatement here. What might have been extremely titillating at the time is comedic at best these days, gravity is merely a suggestion, the ballistics almost serve like a whole different character with their own will, nothing will stop them from floating in every possible direction at the slightest suggestion.

On the other hand, the character designs actually aged quite well, and it's really impressive that every character had 3 whole outfits to work with. Bayman's outfit is perfect as is, Hayabusa looks as good as ever, and Tina's wrestler outfit can actually rival with King's iconic fit in my opinion. I probably don't even have to mention Kasumi. Not everyone will consider her outfit to be in good tase, of course, but she was basically Mai Shiranui of DoA, which means we're probably not gonna see her join the Smash Bros. roster any time soon.

But there's a lot more to say about the presentation than just "heh, boobs". For its time, Dead or Alive was a remarkably good-looking game, and they even went through the extra effort of developing a graphics engine that would help to reduce the amount of jagged edges that early 3D graphics are known for.

I can't quite extend the same sentiment for stages and UI, however, especially if you were to play the PS1 version, which had to cut down on the 3D detail. The things are looking much better on the arcade, but it's still a lot more to go off. The main issue is that the majority of stages are just too generic to leave an impression, which is not helped by the ever present grid pasted onto the playable area. Among stock temples, cities, and nature, the platform elevator is the only thing that stuck with me. It's simple, but you can feel the movement, it feels dynamic, which is something that future DoA stages will be all about.

Fortunately, Dead or Alive more than makes up for insignificant downsides with the amount of work they put into animation. Much like Tekken, they did a lot of motion capture that was tweaked later to get the best of both worlds. Cool martial arts moves, but adjusted to better fit the game and look good on the screen. After all, even the coolest moves in real life don't look quite as good as they could, since we can't just magically alter our momentum to highlight the key poses.

The said action is the second defining feature of this game. Compared to early Tekken and Virtua Fighter games, Dead or Alive is extremely snappy and aggressive, a word that we have been hearing quite a lot in the lead up to Tekken 8, which ironically borrows one of the most distinct Dead or Alive mechanics with the stage hazards, not to mention Yohei Shimbori being on the team.

Unlike Tekken 8 however, DoA encouraged more action by changing one little part of the Virtua Fighter formula. Screw the Guard button, this is now a Hold. DoA allowed you to guard by holding back, but blocking is boring, right? How about you just guess what your opponent's attack is and turn it against them. That was essentially what holds were all about, input them at the right time and for the right type of attack, and you get rewarded.

This one change completely disrupted the traditional turn order of fighting games and made matches feel a lot more intense. While Tekken players often consider turn stealing as an offense that should be punished by death, Dead or Alive players were raised, molded by it. It would only get more advanced as time went on, so it's rather impressive that they nailed such an important mechanic from the first try.

The original Dead or Alive might not have been the same smash hit as some of its contemporaries, but it did more than enough. This game single-handedly pulled Tecmo out of going bankrupt, and it started a franchise that would keep on going to this day, although not in a form that most of us would prefer...

With that, we're drawing this year to a close. It has been a pleasure to do these retro highlights for all who actually bother to read them. I wish you guys an incredible weekend, and a Happy New Year! I hope that 2024 will turn out to be great, both for you, our readers, and for us here at DashFight.

As per tradition, here is your last track of the year.