Happy Birthday Dead or Alive!
Many are convinced that the chosen name, Dead or Alive, derives precisely from the critical situation in which the company found itself: dead or alive. A great game that would put the accounts back in order, or a failure that would have destroyed Tecmo for good, there was no middle ground.
Fortunately, history has made us one of the best fighting games ever, and thus the salvation of its producers. To celebrate 25 years of Dead or Alive, let's retrace the origins of this controversial series.
The first chapter takes shape from the initial idea
The historic cover of the first chapter on console, the version Itagaki's favorite on Sega Seturn Initially intended for the arcade, Dead or Alive later arrived on home consoles of the time: Sega Saturn in October 1997 and PlayStation in March of the following year, late, but with a revised, corrected and improved. Team Ninja was specially created by Itagaki to develop the Dead or Alive brand, keeping its cultural and videogame roots firmly in place. First of all, the level of technicality required of the players, on average higher than normal. Then, the obligation to make the most of the hardware on which they developed.Itagaki in an old interview stated that he remembered the exact number of polygons of each character in Dead or Alive: Kasumi was made up of precisely 550 polygons. A sign that, evidently, at the time the game was originally developed, the technical limits were essential to the realization of their ideas. Yet their game pushed graphically like few others. Team Ninja had even managed to make the infamous "wobbly breasts" effect work, an animation that aroused a lot of curiosity from the large male audience. It might sound silly, but it was a remarkable technical achievement.
Technical perfection
The close-up of one of Dead or Alive's most beloved characters, Kasumi Itagaki and her staff always have had a reputation for making the most of the hardware they were working on. This was the case for the first Dead or Alive, developed on the versatile and powerful SEGA Model 2 coin-op card (the same as Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop 2, Virtua Striker and many others), but also home conversions for Saturn and PlayStation had shown impressive image quality, animations and polygonal complexity. Fun fact: for SEGA that was the first time that its own hardware card was licensed to other developers.Dead or Alive 3, released exclusively on the first Xbox incarnation, also represented the highest graphic quality achievable at the time.
From the point of view of the gameplay, Itagaki had the right talent to be able to exploit some of the best features of the most successful fighting games of the time, but grafting a well-defined and strong soul into Dead or Alive.
Critics initially emphasized the many similarities with the much more famous Virtua Fighter, classifying him as yet another clone and experiment. Reality, on the other hand, soon showed a profoundly different game, only apparently comparable to the SEGA masterpiece. Dead or Alive emphasized the player's speed and reaction to opponent attacks via counter moves, which have become his trademark over time. A real game based on action and reaction, within a triangular system that was very reminiscent of a sort of Chinese morra in a fighting game. The classic shots such as kicks and punches were therefore included in the characteristic playability of the series, which could be blocked with the relative counter moves, the holds, countered by the blows and the projections that were canceled by the holds. A great deal of emphasis was placed on the ability to perform combos in sequence, giving Dead or Alive its typical fast and frenetic pace.
What Dead or Alive introduced to its genre
A scene of the gameplay of the first DOA If the "triangular" system of Dead or Alive represented a pleasant variation, it is equally true that in the series were introduced real absolute novelties for the world of fighting games. One of these was the famous "danger zone". It was a part of the outer ring full of traps and explosives that had the function of blowing up the opponent or stunning him. This feature was then revived, modified and expanded over time by introducing dynamic levels, mobile or hanging areas and points where you can cling.It goes without saying that one of the most appreciated aspects of the game were the characters, especially the female ones. Itagaki had wanted a strong sexy component across the entire roster of fighters, including male characters like Zack, Jann Lee and Bayman. Leaving aside the good Gen Fu a little ahead in age, we can say that practically all the protagonists of Dead or Alive exceeded in the overexposure of muscles and curves. Fan service has always been highly appreciated by the Japanese public and it is probably no coincidence that the series has reached its maximum success within the domestic walls of the Rising Sun.
Over time DOA has nevertheless been able to conquer its slice of the stainless public, all over the world. To understand its success, just think that the main chapters are 6, but there are 29 titles including spin-offs, improved versions, updated editions and more. The Dead or Alive series has produced countless merchandise products, soundtracks, gadgets and even a highly questionable Hollywood film starring Devon Aoki and singer Holly Valance as Christie (appeared from the third installment).
The formation of Itagaki and Team Ninja
A close-up of the creator of the series, Tomonobu Itagaki The story of Dead or Alive travels parallel to that of its creator Tomonobu Itagaki. Hired by Tecmo in the middle of the Super Famicom / Megadrive era, Itagaki starts working on the Tecmo Bowl game together with the "guru" Akiko Shimoji, creator of the series, and Yoshiaki Inose, former author of Ninja Gaiden for NES. And in all probability, it was from the latter that he began to learn and hone his skills as a game designer and developed that way of conceiving video games as a pure form of entertainment. Itagaki distanced himself from the first attempts of the time to create playful experiences not necessarily combined with a deep and refined interaction with the joypad, but rather with a deeper narrative, remaining strongly linked to a more playful and immediate concept of playability.The development of Tecmo Bowl "took away" many talented young people, often at their first job, such as Takeshi Kawaguchi, one of the few programmers who will follow Dead or Alive in all subsequent chapters. Even the programmer friend Hiroaki Ozawa, known at that historical moment, will form the famous Team Ninja called to revive the fortunes of the dying Japanese company. Ozawa then became chief programmer in the second DOA, the chapter of consecration, and director of Devil's Third (Itagaki's latest game).
Dead or Alive according to Itagaki thought
a roundup of some female protagonists of Dead or Alive Tomonobu Itagaki has always proved to be one of the most open developers to the western market, in all its forms. This is also evidenced by the close collaboration with Microsoft for the absolute exclusivity of the third chapter of Dead or Alive arrived on the first Xbox, a rather unusual fact for a Japanese developer, if we also think about the historical era and the general distrust towards the entrance. straight leg of Americans in the console market. Itagaki's thinking on video games of the time describes his philosophy well. He came to openly and publicly criticize titles like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X, cornerstones of the Japanese industry and great successes of the time, only for a specific reason.According to Itagaki, in fact, these games were not sufficiently interactive. Here, just the interaction between user and joypad, if we want pure playability, has always been his obsession since the first steps in the development of Dead or Alive. We are not talking about the refinement or cleanliness of game designers, the Miyamoto trademark of Nintendo (which by the way had expressed similar concepts), but rather a dark and rock version of the same, imbued with more adult and mature content, a boost sexualization of one's characters and the conception of violence as a means (and not an end) to make his visual art spectacular and entertaining.
What future for the series?
A fight of Dead or Alive 6 Despite Itagaki's departure from Tecmo, Dead or Alive has continued to live thanks to game directors such as Yohei Shimbori, who recently also announced his departure from the company. After Dead or Alive 4, in fact, the series has seen a sharp decline in audience and consideration by critics. Thanks to a system of microtransactions driven to madness, the definitive stance against sexually explicit contents and a direction that is not exactly excellent, the team's support for the sixth chapter ceased in 2020.The seventh chapter, announced precisely at E3 2021, it is expected on the new generation consoles and (perhaps it is no coincidence) it will be a reboot of the series that will take into consideration the first three video games. Fingers crossed, and for now, happy birthday to Dead or Alive!
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