The History of Dead or Alive

Tecmo bet the company on a Virtua Fighter rival, and the bet paid. Dead or Alive turned a near bankrupt publisher into a fighting game franchise.

In the mid 1990s Tecmo was in serious trouble. After years of investing heavily in sports games against EA's rise, the company had posted three consecutive years of losses and was on the verge of bankruptcy by 1995, in desperate need of a new game to turn things around.

Management asked programmer Tomonobu Itagaki to build either a fighting game like Sega's Virtua Fighter or a racing game like Daytona USA. He chose fighting. The result, built by Tecmo Creative #3, the team that became Team Ninja, was released in arcades on November 26, 1996, and it did considerably more than turn things around.

HOW IT WAS MADE

A fan's answer to Virtua Fighter

THE WAGER AND THE NAME

Itagaki made a wager with Tecmo's management, including vice president Junji Nakamura, assuring them he would create a game that would garner a fan base. After working titles including Ninja Fighter and Poligon Fighter, he named it Dead or Alive to demonstrate both the company's and the game's fail or succeed status, and formed the division that became Team Ninja.

FAST, AND PROVOCATIVE ON PURPOSE

Itagaki was a fan of Virtua Fighter, but wanted Dead or Alive to stand out. That meant a strong emphasis on speed, and on being provocative: he believed entertainment needed both violence and sexuality to truly be entertainment. Every animation in the game was created using motion capture.

SEGA'S MODEL 2, LICENSED OUT

The game runs on Sega's Model 2 arcade board, the same hardware as Virtua Fighter 2, and it was part of the first licensing of that hardware to third party companies. It was unveiled alongside Jaleco's Super GT 24h at the February 1996 AOU show, as part of Sega's announcement of the licensing program.

A TEAM WITH A FIGHTER BEHIND IT

Some of the staff had worked on Tecmo's first fighting game, Tokidensho Angel Eyes. The tournament they built sent eight fighters, among them the runaway ninja Kasumi, the wrestler Tina Armstrong, and Ninja Gaiden's Ryu Hayabusa, after the title held by the DOATEC corporation.

THE RELEASE

Arcade first, then two very different home versions

ARCADE, NOVEMBER 26, 1996

Released worldwide in November 1996, Dead or Alive was listed by Game Machine as the most popular arcade game in its January 1, 1997 issue. A rumored Nintendo 64 port never happened.

SATURN, OCTOBER 1997, JAPAN ONLY

The Saturn conversion arrived in Japan on October 10, 1997, finished ahead of its planned December date. To compensate for the Saturn generating fewer polygons than Model 2, the developers added Gouraud shading, a feature the arcade board lacked, and rebuilt backgrounds as bitmaps with parallax scrolling, in the manner of Saturn Virtua Fighter 2. It added a rendered intro and tournament and training modes. Acclaim's planned UK release was cancelled as the Saturn declined outside Japan.

PLAYSTATION, 1998, EVERYWHERE

The PlayStation version reached Japan on March 12, 1998, North America on March 31, and Europe on July 1. It was the first game designed for Sega arcade hardware to be ported to PlayStation, and it was a rebuild: two new characters, Bass Armstrong and Ayane, a different graphics engine, a slightly revamped fighting engine, new costumes, and new background music. Tecmo then took it back to the arcade in Japan as Dead or Alive ++, and released the PlayStation version on the Japanese PlayStation Network in 2008.

THE TWO COVERS

Same game, two shelves

United States

America got the fighters: Leifang front and center, Kasumi behind her with the white hair the game itself never gave her, Tina at the side, and a red Martial Arts Fighter banner.

Japan

Japan got a white, minimal cover built from three cropped strips of eyes, the words 3D Combative Sports, and almost nothing else. It is one of the boldest PlayStation covers of its era.

HOW IT WAS RECEIVED

The hold system won the reviews

NEXT GENERATION, ARCADE

Reviewing the arcade release, Next Generation wrote that it mimics Virtua Fighter 2 in look and feel to a frightening degree, but boasts smooth control, crisp polygonal graphics, and an attitude that may let it stand on its own, singling out the character variety and the danger zones.

SEGA SATURN MAGAZINE, 94 PERCENT

The Saturn version was reviewed widely in the US and UK despite never releasing there. Sega Saturn Magazine scored it 94 percent and called it an incredible beat em up, technically and visually, even getting close to beating Sega's own Virtua Fighter games. Computer and Video Games gave the Saturn version 5 of 5 and called it an essential buy for import Saturn gamers.

PLAYSTATION SCORES

For the PlayStation version, IGN scored it 8.5 of 10, GameSpot 7.3 of 10, and Famitsu 31 of 40. GameSpot had scored the Saturn import 6.8 of 10. Reviews of the PlayStation version hailed it as better still, with enhanced graphics and new content adding replay value.

PRAISE FOR THE HOLDS

Praise focused on the hold mechanic. Next Generation said it blurs the line between offense and defense, replacing one sided attacking with a push and pull struggle. EGM reviewer Dan Hsu called the system of holds and reversals the best part of the game, and GameSpot described counter chains that turn into a Jackie Chan style grappling match, back and forth three or four times.

THE DISSENT, AND THE JOKE

GamePro's PlayStation review argued that adding aggression to a defensive tactic reduces the game's depth, making it a game for beginners. The exaggerated bouncing breast animation was widely ridiculed: Jeff Gerstmann wrote in GameSpot that they bounce around like gelatin for no apparent reason, and Sega Saturn Magazine said they wobble like jellies, seemingly independent of the rest of the body. Reviewers were relieved the feature could be turned off.

THE NUMBERS THAT SAVED TECMO

After a loss of 5.2 million dollars in 1995, Dead or Alive helped Tecmo post a profit of 9.2 million dollars, 970 million yen, in 1996, saving the company from bankruptcy. The Saturn version topped the Japanese charts in its release week, its initial run of 92,000 copies selling out on day one, and passed 161,000 copies in Japan. The PlayStation version sold over 59,000 copies in its first week, and the two home versions together passed 235,000 copies in Japan.

WHAT IT LEFT BEHIND

A franchise, and a house style

Dead or Alive 2 arrived in 1999, and the series became one of Tecmo's flagships: five main sequels, numerous updates and spin offs, and a film adaptation followed. Its identity never changed. Speed, simple commands, reaction time, the hold based counter system, and stages that hurt you remained the formula, and the countering system in particular became the series' signature contribution to the genre.

In 2004, Tecmo collected the early games as Dead or Alive Ultimate for Xbox. The enhanced version of the first game was based on the Saturn version, because it was Itagaki's preferred version, with smoother graphics, surround sound, and Xbox Live play, making the package one of the first fighting games with online play.

The critics kept it on the lists. GamesRadar placed the game at number 28 among the best Sega Saturn games, praising its high speed, rock, paper, scissors style of play, and in 2011 Complex ranked Dead or Alive as the seventh best fighting game of all time. For a game made by a company that was one failure from closing, seventh best of all time is a remarkable return on a wager.