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Dead or Alive (DOA) (デッドオアアライブ) is a video game series produced by Tecmo that is comprised primarily of fighting games. The story and characters are the creation of Tomonobu Itagaki, and the game was developed by Tecmo's Team Ninja development team. A feature film, DOA: Dead or Alive, directed by Corey Yuen and starring Devon Aoki, Jaime Pressly, Holly Valance, Sarah Carter and Natassia Malthe was released on August 25 2006. •
Gameplay The Dead or Alive series focuses on fast-paced gameplay in a three-dimensional playing field. In comparison to other fighters in its genre, such as Virtua Fighter, the series places emphasis on striking characters quickly and efficiently. Air juggling is a factor in the series, but is easier to execute and more favorable due to the countering system and character's recovery times, which disallows slow, technical sets of moves in most instances. DOA's most innovative additions to the genre is its countering system. Beginning from the original Dead or Alive, players could input a backwards directional input in cooperation with the respective guard button to defend against a characters attack whilst dealing significant damage to the victim's life bar. Counter holds must be timed correctly with an attack, and also must be inputted correspondingly with the area of attack. For example, a character that successfully counters a low kick attack from another player must time the input as well as place a downward directional push on the joystick. Like other modern fighting games that attempt to emulate the real life martial arts, DOA's input system is modeled on the controls to correspond to the actions being carried out by the avatar; a forward directive punch would most likely be executed with the punch input and the pressing of the directional pad in the appropriate direction. The series controls also make the instances of speed and simplicity more congruent with the focus of timing and combos in mind, as the commands for basic attacks are widely considered more straightforward than most video games. There is only one button for punch, kick, throw and guard, with the player rarely having to combine more than two different input schemes together at the time. In Dead or Alive 2, the series became innovative in its tag fighting system, allowing characters to switch back and forth for combo attacks and even attack simultaneously when timed correctly. The tag mode also implemented special throws unique to each pair of characters chosen, and allows the participation of a four player mode, something not common in the genre. Inspiration and development The DOA series is designed by programmer Tomonobu Itagaki, who is regarded by the game development community for his outspoken and stubborn nature in the development of the series. Before the release of the original Dead or Alive, Itagaki had recently become a programmer for the budding company Tecmo, which was in need of a brand of video games to establish a sufficient market. In this vein, Itagaki made a wager with the head of the company, assuring the president he would create a video game that would garner a competent fan base. Because of the wager, Itagaki named the series "Dead or Alive" to demonstrate the series fail or succeed status and proceeded to form a division in the company named "Team Ninja" (described by G4 as reclusive and secretive as ninjas themselves). Revealed in a December 2004 interview by Game Informer magazine, Itagaki's inspiration for the series derived from the Fatal Fury series in Japan and the Mortal Kombat series in America. In the development, he based DOA's fast gameplay and sexual appeal from the former, and the series' ability to knock opponents off landscapes from the latter: "I wanted to do something that would attract people's attention as I worked on the DOA game. Of course, DOA is known for its bouncing breasts. Well, I didn't come up with that idea originally. I actually got the idea from one of SNK's 2D fighting games Garou Densetsu. Of course, when I applied it to a 3D game, it was almost too much for people. And of course, it hurts to fall off from high places in DOA, but the idea came from Mortal Kombat. In the case of Mortal Kombat, the 2D fighter, the character falls off and he simply dies. That ends the game. That's it. But we figured it would be more interesting to have the character continue to fight after the fall. And that's what we did" On Itagaki's view on how he wished the series to contribute to the fighting genre, he replied, "To answer your latter question about how I want DOA to be remembered, I want people to remember DOA as a game that was very aggressive and combative. As to the first question - how it contributed to the fighting genre - I look at it as something similar to how sushi was released in this country and became mainstream. You know, like, some people like graphics, some people like animation, some like flashy character design and so forth. Through DOA, we want to reach out to those people and become somewhat of a mainstream game." • Plot The Dead or Alive series revolves around the various motives and goals of skilled martial artists and their participation in a fictional world-wide fighting tournament named the "Dead or Alive tournament", held by a massive corporation called DOATEC (Dead or Alive Tournament Executive Committee) who runs the competition regularly for unknown motives. The tournament is held in arenas around the world, ranging from the North Pole to the Amazon rainforest. In the first Dead or Alive, characters were described in the story as attempting to enter the tournament for personal reasoning, such as Zack entering for profit and the runaway kunoichi Kasumi using the tournament as means to take revenge upon her traitorous uncle, Raidou. In the conclusion of this tournament, Kasumi kills Raidou but cannot return to her village despite her honorable motives due to ninja society's strict laws upon the departure of clan members. The following game, Dead or Alive 2 takes place after the original in an undisclosed timeframe, (though within the same year due to the characters' retention of their chronological ages from the original game) with the world's peace and stability threatened by a super creature known as the Gohyakumine Bankotsu-bo. It is also discovered in this tournament, that Kasumi's brother Hayate has recovered from injuries sustained from a previous fight with Raidou, but was recently captured and used as a test subject by DOATEC to carry out a bio weapon experiment codenamed Epsilon and then subsequently discarded. In this iteration, the opera singer Helena and mercenary Leon are introduced into the storyline and also enter the tournament in pursuit of their personal aspirations. The third game, Dead or Alive 3 takes place shortly after Ryu Hayabusa's defeat of the Gohyakumine Bankotsu-bo and features a similar premise. However, the main plot begins to revolve around the dealings of the DOATEC committee and it is revealed they perform experiments on various test subjects in an attempt to create the ultimate fighter. With the populous and fighters vastly unaware of DOATEC's wrongdoings, the company continues their experiments proceeding the Epsilon and Alpha stages, initiating the Omega project and transforming a ninja named Genra into a vicious being with no memories of his past life. DOATEC then proceeds to hold a third tournament, using the premise of the fighting arena as a test bed for Omega's abilities. This game concludes its story with the ninja known as Ayane destroying the Omega entity and the introduction of three more fighters, Hitomi, Brad Wong and Christie. The Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball instalment occurs immediately after the conclusion of the third tournament, where the Muay Thai kickboxer Zack tricks the female entrees of the tournament into staying at his island resort for a two week-long vacation. Dead or Alive 4 depicts the previous games' attempts of DOATEC to produce the ultimate bio-weapon and continue their operations. DOA 4 reveals the existence of a product of the Alpha project and a clone of Kasumi, who employs powerful energy and battle tactics. This iteration also establishes the knowledge of various fighters discovering the true nature of the organization and in the climax of the tournament set out to stop its evil deeds. Main series
Side series Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball was released in 2003, shortly after DOA3 and is set immediately after the conclusion of the tournament in regards to the plot. The gameplay revolves around the women of the series playing various mini-games about the many locations of Zack Island, a reclusive private resort. This installment features no fighting engine, instead being much like a simulation game that encourages the player to establish relationships with the AI of characters, and eventually make a two-person team to compete in volleyball competitions. "Zack dollars" earned from completing mini-games allows the player to purchase hundreds of different swimsuits, some of which range from regular to extremely provocative. According to Itagaki, who revealed the basis for the game in an interview with G4, he claims to have taken note of fan's wish for a beach ball mini-game in DOA2. A sequel for this game, merely called Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 is in production for the Xbox 360. A side-story game, named Dead or Alive: Code Chronos, is also in production for the Xbox 360, and was confirmed in the July 2006 edition of Play Magazine by Itagaki to "...not be a fighting game" and instead act as a prequel to the series proper, relaying the history of ninjas Ayane and Kasumi. Earlier reports had implied the character of Helena would be more heavily involved. • Criticism Tecmo is regularly criticised for its use of sex to sell the Dead or Alive series. This has convinced some gamers who feel that the games are focusing only on graphics and the female characters. The series' gameplay is also criticized by many players who feel that the fighting engine is too simple, lacking the depth of many other 3D fighting games. In another Game Informer interview, Toby Gard, the creator of Tomb Raider and its female protagonist Lara Croft noted his view on the sex appeal of Dead or Alive. In response to a query that supported Lara was a large part of introducing sex appeal into video games and how this had an impact on the gaming industry, Toby replied: "...I don't think its wrong or bad in any way, really, it just seems to be getting out of hand with the old Xtreme Beach ball scenarios. I think that's going a tad too far. That's not really empowering anyone." • See also | ||||||||||
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