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Zack Male Striking Attacks Muay Thai |
Part 2: DEAD OR ALIVE (MODEL2)
| Ichigo | Today's the Tanabata Star Festival! | Miruku | So we're having two "stars" shine some light on the development of DEAD OR ALIVE for arcades! |
| KAZAMAN | So much happened... back then. But most of it's classified. |
| MITSUO | (laughs) Yeah, it was pretty wild. |
| Ichigo | What? What? Tell me! |
| KAZAMAN | My lips are sealed. |
| Ichigo | Maybe my charm will convince you~ |
| KAZAMAN | Your charm isn't that persuasive. |
| Miruku | How about this incentive?? (flashes something) |
| KAZAMAN | Okay, I'll talk! |
| Ichigo | What was that about?? |
| KAZAMAN | DEAD OR ALIVE was originally a four-player fighting game. |
| Ichigo | Really?! |
| MITSUO | Three-on-one battles with stage terrain playing a bigger part. |
| Ichigo | So why'd you change it? |
| MITSUO | ...It looked kind of lame. |
| KAZAMAN | We had four solid-color polygonal characters - red, yellow, blue, and green. |
| Miruku | Monochrome characters? That is lame! |
| MITSUO | (winces) My supervisor and I rewrote the entire proposal during Obon holiday. No summer break for us. |
| KAZAMAN | Wasn't that pitch rejected before it was submitted? |
| MITSUO | Ugh... After all that effort, we went with the standard two-player fighting game format. We still wanted to mix things up and considered fighting robots at one point. |
| KAZAMAN | That was tossed out too. |
| MITSUO | Yeah, well, all that trial and error is how we got the current DOA!! |
| KAZAMAN | Those were tough times. We worked overnight constantly. |
| MITSUO | Overnights made me gain about 30 pounds! Hitting 165! |
| Ichigo | Whoa! You ballooned!! |
| KAZAMAN | Other departments joked, “Look, Mitsuo's getting rounder~” |
| MITSUO | Staying overnight meant late-night snacking... When I finally got home, my mailbox was overflowing. The postman begged me to cancel my subscriptions. |
| KAZAMAN | Only you could convince a postman to cancel the mail. |
| MITSUO | Seriously, it was so busy, hahaha. |
| KAZAMAN | Speaking of which, we began production in September and pushed to make it to the AOU trade show in February. |
| MITSUO | We crunched down to the wire. After pulling an all-nighter to deliver the build, we set up our booth at dawn—exhausted but proud—thinking "This is it. We nailed it. The crowds will love this..." |
| KAZAMAN | Then SEGA... debuted VIRTUA FIGHTER 3 next to us. |
| MITSUO | Crowds came... and faced the opposite direction. Gus-san and Katsu-san performmed skits to draw attention. |
| Ichigo | That’s rough... |
| KAZAMAN | Plus, in our game... characters jumped 15 meters into the air! Like grasshoppers fighting. |
| MITSUO | And the breasts... shook non-stop! |
| Ichigo | Excuse me? |
| MITSUO | So I was the "boob initialization" guy... and I totally forgot to reset the values before the show! So the whole time, the breasts wobbled non-stop... People still make jokes to this day, haha. I got pulled from boob duty after that. |
| KAZAMAN | Fired from boob duty! |
| KAZAMAN | Speaking of boobs, I remember Mugen-san, our main "jiggle" programmer, had to code while watching Adult Videos next to his computer. Boss yelled “No blushing!” |
| MITSUO | Impossible doesn’t even begin to cover it. |
| Miruku&Ichigo | Anyway... |
| Ichigo | I believe this was Mitsuo's first forray into 3D gaming. How'd you learn the programming know-how? |
| MITSUO | Well, I started from scratch, taught myself, and made a masterpiece of code. Everyone believed in me and trusted me completely. |
| KAZAMAN | Lies! Watching Mitsuo twist and turn three wooden chopsticks like they were the X, Y, and Z axes while coding made everyone nervous! |
| MITSUO | You mean "Mr. 3D"? Still use him! |
| KAZAMAN | It's wild how cutting-edge technology was made with tools that look like a kid’s craft project. |
| MITSUO | The janitor kept throwing "Mr. 3D" out. We're on Gen 8. |
| Miruku&Ichigo | Moving along!! |
| KAZAMAN | Here's an little known secret. |
| Ichigo | Oh?! What is it? What is it?! |
| KAZAMAN | Want to know? Should I tell... |
| Miruku | Just tell us already. |
| KAZAMAN | Okay, okay. So, Bayman's stage has fans with real wind physics calculations that causes clothing to flutter. |
| MITSUO | Wait... really? No one’s noticed that, right? |
| KAZAMAN | I just learned this yesterday. |
| Ichigo | That's amazing!! Are we allowed to share that?? |
| Miruku | Hey Ichigo! What's the big deal? If no one noticed, does it even exist? |
| Ichigo | What got into you?? |
| THE END | |
~EXTRA~
Concept Art
(Click each thumbnail to enlarge.)
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Zack Male Striking Attacks Muay Thai |
| Kasumi Female Joint-Based Attacks Ninjutsu |
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Bass Male Grappling Attacks Pro Wrestling *Didn't make it into the original roster despite being one of our first ideas. Would debut later in the PlayStation home port. |
| Jann Lee Male Striking Attacks Kung Fu |
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| ֍Prototype Character Names | |||
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Kasumi | Kasumi | Her name stayed from Mitsuo's initial pitch - a rare case of getting it on the first-shot! |
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Lei Fang | Fan Fu | Started out as an old man... apparently. |
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Tina | Tina | Kept her name but lost her original identity... as Bass Armstrong? |
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Jann Lee | Bruce Lu | "Lee" was too on-the-nose for a homage. We compromised... poorly. |
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Hayabusa | Kamui | Direct lift from Kamui Den manga - subtlety wasn't our strong suit. |
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Bayman | Gatsby | Either my boss loved Fitzgerald or someone really liked hair gel. |
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Zack | Kelly | Japanese wordplay, "keri" translates to either "kick" or "Kelly." |
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Gen Fu | Hong Di | The only normal name? Probably an accident. |
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Raidou | Sho (Sho Kosugi) | He was a robot Codenamed "Epsilon" at some point. |