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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- A playthrough of the boss Raidou in Tecmo's Dead or Alive 1.
So, here we are. Dead or Alive. Joy.
Dead or Alive is easily my least favourite of the main fighting game series. It's always been a game with more emphasis on style over substance, usually in the form of its incredible stages, and the over-emphasis on costume-acquiring for female characters. It also has one of the absolute most flawed fighting engines in existence, and it comes down to one thing; the counter button. This button is your worst goddamn nightmare, as in every game the AI will happily use it to bullshit levels of absurdity, countering nearly everything you do or throwing you off of your combos. It's also used to execute certain holds, and the AI nearly always seems to have priority over you with its holds and throws. You do get used it after a while however, especially in the later titles, and by DOA5 in particular I found myself getting quite used to it and kind of appreciating its inclusion, though I still think it’s really damn cheat.
DoA is also extremely derivative of Virtua Fighter as a series, right down to having a mimic boss as its first boss and quite obviously just being a modified version of Virtua Fighter 2, although in hindsight I’ve come to realise that it’s effectively almost a replacement to Fighting Vipers as the zany, quirky alternative to Virtua Fighter’s modest design. Team Ninja have never really taken the series all too seriously (as evident from the fact that no less than three DoA Xtreme Volleyball games exist), and the series has continually either been left to wallow in obscurity or, now, more recently, been milked for every left drop of what it's worth.
Raidou is yet another mimic boss. Like Dural, all his moves are derived from one of the regular playable characters, which makes him a wholly unique character. He is time-released as a result, but ultimately must be hacked to be played as in the arcade version of the game, unless you want to leave an emulator running on your computer for weeks on end. Which you shouldn’t do regardless, as the Model 2 emulator has a huge tendency to crash. Raidou in terms of design quite good, looking rather intimidating. The actual character himself is a piece of shit, something which I'll talk more about in a later video.
Like VF2 and Last Bronx, the other fighting games on the Model 2 engine, Dead or Alive 1 is an innately extremely tough game if you don’t know what you’re doing. As with Last Bronx, my original playthrough for this was 50 minutes long, with 30 mins of that being spent on fighting Gen-Fu, and it nearly always came down to that bloody counter button. This game also has perhaps one of the nastiest/best mechanics in any arcade fighting game there is, depending on how you see it. I lean more towards the latter though. If the player hasn't won a match, the AI will go easier on them. Once I've won a round though, they go full bullshit and counter and/or dodge every move I try. It's an interesting mechanic, but I find it a touch malicious in the way it effectively lulls you into the false sense of security.
As you can see though, this playthrough went hilariously well. Just like my Red Eye playthrough for Last Bronx, I managed to knock 40 minutes off of my playing time by finding the enemy’s weakness and then exploiting it for all its worth. That’s no less than three Model 2 fighting games I’ve found exploits for (VF2, Last Bronx and this one), and it’s more than a little jarring to have been the one to conquer these seemingly impossible titles. I feel like the guy who discovered that Achilles’ weakness was his heel; it’s weird for such monstrous entities to have such evident exploits.
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What was the exploit for this game? Well, running away and then attack the opponent with a lunging counter attack while they’re trying to pull off a move. It’s so obvious that I didn’t even think to try it properly until this playthrough, after somewhat discovering it in my previous attempt. As was the case with VF2 and Last Bronx. It’s so poetic.
As for further thoughts in hindsight, can I just say that this game is simply gorgeous. The Model 3 board was released in the same year as this, but this game actually rivals its graphics despite being on a previous board. The character models are insanely well done, to the point that even the Saturn port of the game looked phenomenal. Gameplay-wise I still find it a little clunky, but that will change in the future. I’ve definitely grown more used to it the more I’ve played it (no surprise there, I know) and my appreciation for the series has grown over time. Unless until DOA4, fuck that game.
If DoA Dimensions ever gets a decent emulation then I’ll be able to cover Raidou again, but we’ll be seeing him one more time at least anyway. You’ll also see that Raidou’s model glitches if you press start to speed up the intro of the game, although it can get even worse than that.
Next time, it’s something very special indeed.
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Character values for this game
00 Zack
01 Tina
02 Jahn-Lee
11 Raidou
Another thing that's similar between DOA and VF is that the final stage shares the same song as the character select screen.
Also side note, I can't be the only one who thinks Raidou bares a resemblence to that zombie Sega used in there promotional art for House of The Dead?
Ah, good point. Can't believe I missed that one.
Also, given that both games were made on the same engine, well, you might actually be on to something there. From what I can tell this is basically a modified version of VF2, so it wouldn't surprise me if Tecmo shared a little of their programming and designs with Sega in return.
Remember when Raidou wasn't a Zombie Cyborg Ninja.
I have NEVER seen this arcade release holy shit. It feels so much different and equally as good, it must be said. I really like the music though, plus the announcer's pretty rad too.
I'll be covering that other arcade release too, but indeed this is the original one which most people seem to forget about. Hell, I know I did for years. DOA1 is one of those bizarre games where it went through a bunch of versions while still effectively being the same game; you have this one, the Saturn port, the PS1 port, and finally DOA 1++, which is an arcade version made using the PS1 port, and then there's even DOA1 Ultimate which is an updated version of the Saturn port. Sort of makes all of DOA5's variations make sense, now that i think about it.
I've seen this game in arcades all of once. The local bowling alley just so happened to pick it up.
I wish there was a Dead Or Alive Collection with both the Arcade AND Playstation Versions of Dead Or Alive 1 included.
Don't forget the arcade version of DOA++ too.
@@AdmiralMcFish Right.
4:54 Great. Another fighting game series with an old dude with the name Gen.
Pretty common, isn't it. Not even sure why either; I guess must just be an old-fashioned name in China or something.
Well ,although I agree with you concerning the "bullshit level" of DOA1 cheapness ,the following games are pretty fun and gorgeous to look at.But to each its own. ;) (and I played this baby on arcades just once)
Oh, by all means they're gorgeous games. Style is a bit part of the series and to this day even DOA 3 and 4 still look pretty damn good. Gameplay-wise they are quite fun, by that counter-hold bullshit drove me mad in DOA4 where it just felt so overpowered; I'm glad they toned it down a lot more for DOA5 and onwards. Never really gonna be "my series", but there is quite a lot to enjoy here. I just don't consider it to be quite on the same level as the other fighting games series out there.
The earlier DoAs were rough but I like the newer ones. Dimensions was probably my favorite, followed by 5 Last Round.
I'm a fair bit more positive on the later titles. It's never gonna be a series I love to any extent but there is a lot I like about it; the aesthetics and the lore were surprisingly good for what seemed to be quite an exploitative series, and by 5 Last Round they've developed a really damn competent fighting engine, especially over Vanilla DOA5, I found.
wow they REALLY changed the formula for this game
In what respect/s?
The combo system, inputs, character identity, and stage layouts
@@confucamus3536 Oh yeah, I see what you mean now.
The original Dead or Alive was basically just a modified version of Sega's Virtua Fighter 2, and even ran on the same arcade hardware. The PS1 port changed it up considerably, and those changes were cemented further in Dead or Alive++ and Dead or Alive 2, which I also covered. I think they just wanted to get away from being seen as a Virtua Fighter clone, which is fair enough it must be said. That said, this game is still pretty good, if a bit difficult in the later stages.
He reminds me of Rugal Bernstein and Kazuya Mishima
I wish Tecmo/Team Ninja had ported this to the Xbox for DoA Ultimate, rather than use the Saturn version. I wasn't aware the Japanese arcade version has text endings, it's strange they took those out of the Saturn and PS1 ports.
Probably lazily on Team Ninja's part, I'd imagine. And yeah, I thought them using the Saturn version was a really bizarre idea, but maybe it was just too much effort to port the Model 2 original, especially after remaking DOA2 in the DOA3 engine.
@@AdmiralMcFish Koei might Pay Sega Permission to Emulate the Model 2 Version of DOA1.
@@conradojavier7547 Itagaki revealed the real reason why he chose the Saturn version over the Model 2 version in an interview in 2005. The reason is quite simple. The Saturn version of DOA was the first game he fully produced and because of that it was his personal favourite version.
This is gonna be a treat. I'm actually one of the very few people you'll find who's willing to take DoA seriously (as seriously as i take anything anyway...) i'll save my full opinion on the series for when we run out of other things to talk about. As for Raidou (or as my reference laden brain keeps wanting to call him Rowsdower.) is that the tear in his pants makes him look a lot less menacing and a lot more like a hobo, my brain actually started thinking of RiffTrax-Nick-Nolte jokes while watching this. I should go now before this gets worse.
Goddammit, now I can't unsee that. He's gone from terrifying badass to looking like the guy who hassles you for a can of Special Brew, now. Well, at least there's always his DOA5LR design.
You're welcome :)
Oh boy, here we go
And on the subject of bosses, what do you think of the Cervantes trailer?
I loved that most of the comments on that vid were some derivative of "okay guys, pretend to be surprised." Cervantes returning is good though and he's looking pretty badass, but I'm still mostly just waiting on finding out whether that Hwang rumour is true or not.
I wish DoA's combat would stop with all the counter strike/counter throw/counter hold BS...too much damage gets thrown around for both players as a result
Yeah, it's never gonna be my cup of tea. I did begin to get used to it and quite enjoy it after a while, and I can see now how it's supposed to work, but it never stops being frustrating when you're stopped dead in the middle of a combo by a counter, or counter throwed for trying to use a hold.
It's been toned down in the newer ones, but in this one especially, it's basically "oh damn a 15 hit combo, I'm doing great! Oh no, I've been held, and there goes 50% of my health."
This is one of my favorite fighter series' but I can't deny that counters were kinda broken in the older games.