Dead or Alive 2


is a 1999 fighting game developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo for arcades. Initially only released in Japan, it was later released worldwide and was ported to the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 home systems in 2000. It is the second main entry in the Dead or Alive fighting series following the original Dead or Alive. Several enhanced editions of the game were released, including the updates Dead or Alive 2 Millennium for arcades and Dead or Alive 2 Hardcore or Dead or Alive 2 Hard*Core for the PS2.
The game's plot focuses on the evil tengu, Gohyakumine Bankotsubo, who escaped from the tengu world into the human world, and the Dead or Alive tournament's change in purpose and significance after the murder of DOATEC's founder and CEO, Fame Douglas. The game improved upon the gameplay system by including many new features; it improved upon and popularized the concept of multi-tiered environments and improved upon the graphics engine of its predecessor by utilizing the Sega NAOMI hardware.
Dead or Alive 2 received universal acclaim, strong sales, and is considered one of the greatest fighting games of all time. By 2001, all versions of Dead or Alive 2 combined totaled over 1.5 million units sold worldwide. In 2004, Dead or Alive 2 was remade for the Xbox as part of Dead or Alive Ultimate. In 2012, DOA2: Hard*Core was released on the PlayStation Network platform in Japan, followed by North America in 2015. Dead or Alive 2 was followed by its sequel Dead or Alive 3 in 2001.

Gameplay

Dead or Alive 2 takes after its predecessor in gameplay, retaining its speed and reaction time-focused combat. The two kinds of hold, Offensive Hold and Defensive Hold, return; the latter are executed by holding back or forward on the directional pad along with the guard input to either force away or counter-damage an opponent. The "danger zones" from the original are removed in favor of more interactive areas.
One unique addition in DOA2 is that fights can occur on either water or ice; when a character is on such a surface, all non-knockdown, non-launching attacks will induce a stun on any successful hit. Walls and falls in the middle of stages are everywhere in the game. There are also some walls that are either electrified, or booby-trapped, clearly causing significantly more damage when a character is slammed into a wall by either a knockdown blow, a throw, or a hold, thereby encouraging such attacks to the wall. Many stages have multiple floors: to get to other floors of the stage, one character must be knocked off a ledge and fall into the next area. These falls deal usually high damage, but not enough to knock the opponent out.
DOA2 also introduced a new mode called Tag Battle Mode which implements a Tag team fighting system that allows players to choose two fighters to form a team, and fight against another team controlled by either the computer, or by other players. Tag Battle Mode allows characters to switch back and forth instantaneously for combo attacks and even attack simultaneously when timed correctly. Special throws unique to every possible pair, Tag Throws, do a great amount of damage to the opponent. There are no limitations for the choice of fighters, allowing for a multitude of unique gameplay styles.
Other notable features include computer animated cutscenes, allowing players to juggle each other into walls, propelling characters from landmarks for more damage, and upon completing the game, presenting the player with somewhat ambiguous endings for the character chosen using the game's standard engine.

Characters

Dead or Alive 2 features a total of 15 fighters, 14 playable fighters and the unplayable Kasumi X. Two of them are unlockable and cannot be used in story mode or in the arcade version. The ten returning veterans from the first DOA game are Ayane, Bass Armstrong, Bayman, Gen Fu, Jann Lee, Kasumi, Leifang, Ryu Hayabusa, Tina Armstrong, and Zack. The four newcomers are Ein, Helena Douglas, Leon, and Tengu.

New

  • Ein, a merciless karateka who was left to die in the esoteric Black forest of Germany. Now with serious amnesia, he cannot remember his past life and aims to find answers to his self-discovery through participation in the second tournament.
  • Helena Douglas, a French opera singer, piguaquan practitioner, and the illegitimate daughter of the founder and former DOATEC leader, Fame Douglas, whose recent assassination has pulled Helena into despair. Her mother, while accompanying her daughter on stage at the Opera House, took a bullet meant for Helena. Helena vowed to seek revenge on the assassin. Discovering that the murder of both her parents is somehow related to DOATEC, she joins the second tournament, determined to find the assassin.
  • Kasumi X, a clone of Kasumi created by the DOATEC Super-human Development Project.
  • Leon, an Italian mercenary soldier and Russian martial arts practitioner who wanders all over the world. His lover Rolande, a thief who worked the Silk Road, died in his arms murmuring that he, the man she loves is the strongest man in the world. In order to fulfill the last words of Rolande, Leon enters the tournament, aspired to be the strongest man on earth.
  • Tengu , real name Gohyakumine Bankotsubo; an evil tengu of the tengu world who murdered his leader, Kuramasan Maouson. He enters the human world to create chaos and make it reign over the world.

    Returning

  • Ayane
  • Bass Armstrong
  • Bayman
  • Gen Fu
  • Jann Lee
  • Kasumi
  • Leifang
  • Ryu Hayabusa
  • Tina Armstrong
  • Zack
Unplayable
Boss character
Unlockable and playable only in the Hardcore version and Japanese Dreamcast version
Unplayable in Story Mode

Plot

, founder and CEO of DOATEC was killed at the end of the 20th century. He was renowned as the sponsor of the legendary Dead or Alive World Combat Championship. After his death, the world began to become chaotic. In the middle of the chaos, it was announced that the second Dead or Alive World Combat Championship will be held.
The purpose and significance of the tournament changed after Douglas' death. The promoter of the second Dead or Alive Championship, who is fond of conflicts and jealous of the strong, is responsible for Douglas's death. The new promoter, Victor Donovan, is more than a corrupt mastermind, but a man of pure evil. His involvement in the tournament began to bring a sense of terror to the world, resulting in the infamous tengu disaster.
Set less than a year later after the original tournament, an evil tengu known as Gohyakumine Bankotsubo, or just Tengu, escapes from the tengu world and threatens the human world's peace and stability. Tengu considers all functions of the human world to be insignificant, and claims that all disasters are nothing more than illusions he has brought about. Kasumi, who won the first tournament was captured by the DOATEC Super-human Development Project and was unwillingly used in the organization's attempt to develop a physical body with superhuman abilities. Kasumi escapes, but her clone "Kasumi X" was created while she was being held captive. Kasumi's brother Hayate, previously injured by Raidou, was also captured and was unwillingly used as a subject of DOATEC's bio-weapon experiment, Epsilon. Modifications were made to Hayate's nervous system, but failed to produce an improvement in the project. As a result, the experiment became a failure.
Ryu Hayabusa enters the tournament vowing to seek and destroy the evil tengu. Though a dangerous, suicidal task for any ordinary man, Hayabusa owes it to himself and to mankind to confront his fate. Hayabusa tries to warn other competitors like Jann Lee about the dangers of the tournament, but finds them unwilling to backdown, so he proceeds to knock them out of the tournament. He later meets a competitor named Ein, who is actually the missing Hayate suffering from amnesia. During their fight, Hayabusa defeats him and restores some semblance of his memory. Eventually, Hayabusa comes face to face with the evil Tengu. He defeats and kills Tengu, winning the tournament.

Development and release

The gameplay and graphics were enhanced and based on a better game engine than the one used in the first game, as all resources went into the characters and the stages. Running on the Sega NAOMI arcade board, it allowed the characters and stages to appear less angular and more detailed. Wanting to emulate gorgeous scenes of martial arts movies, Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja went so far to invite professional martial artists to perform motion capture, making the characters' moves smoother, and developed multi-tiered stages where opponents can be knocked off edges of landmarks down to lower levels where the fight continues.
Dead or Alive 2 was first released in the arcades on October 16, 1999. It featured twelve playable characters, Story Mode and Time Attack Mode. It also included Survival Mode and Tag Battle, but these had to be unlocked with a code in the service menu. An update titled Dead or Alive 2 Millennium was released in arcades worldwide in 2000. This made Survival and Tag Battle available from the start and added school uniforms for Kasumi and Ayane.
Dead or Alive 2 featured the song "Exciter" by punk band, Bomb Factory, in its opening sequence. Also used as a background track was "Deadly Silence Beach" and "Clumsy Bird". Both "Exciter" and "Deadly Silence Beach" can be found on the self-titled mini-album, Bomb Factory, and on the Dead or Alive 2 Original Sound Trax ~PlayStation 2 Version~. "Clumsy Bird" can be found on the album, Break Up.

Home versions

Nine different versions of Dead or Alive 2 were released: two for the arcade market, and the others were home versions. Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja were constantly enhancing the game for both the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 as they worked towards their vision of the "ultimate fighting game".
The Dreamcast port was first released in North America on February 29, 2000. It was identical to the arcade Millennium update release, but added the usual Versus and Sparring modes, as well as Team Battle Mode. This version also featured a simplified hold system compared to the one in the arcade versions. Unlike home ports of the first Dead or Alive game, there were no unlockables in this release. Team Ninja immediately started working on the console version as Tecmo planned to be listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in March 2000. Since the development environment for the Dreamcast was very convenient and the NAOMI hardware was the same as the Dreamcast, the team managed to complete the Dreamcast port in February 2000 as planned. Dead or Alive 2 was the only game that Tecmo published on the Dreamcast.
Dead or Alive 2 was released as a launch title for the PlayStation 2 in Japan on March 30, 2000. This version added new stages and new unlockable costumes. The game engine of the PlayStation 2 port ran using Field Rendering instead of Frame Rendering, thus the PlayStation 2 port appeared much more aliased than the Dreamcast port. This version was buggy and prone to lock up in Versus mode, leaving Japanese players disappointed. Itagaki and his team were only given two months initially to produce the first PlayStation 2 port. Itagaki was greatly disappointed in how the PlayStation 2's development environment was not as convenient as the Dreamcast's, and felt that he could not complete the PlayStation 2 version as planned in March 2000. Itagaki tried to postpone the game, but Tecmo executives insisted on releasing it on time. At the end of this, one of Itagaki's managers tricked him into releasing the game by asking to borrow a copy to play, but instead sent it to a production factory. Itagaki was upset by not being able to finish the game on his own terms and fell into a depression during which he briefly considered quitting the industry.
The European Dreamcast version was released on April 28, 2000. This version included the costumes from the Japanese PlayStation 2 version, but not the new stages. It also added new costumes for Zack and Tina, which pay homage to The Shadow Man and his love interest from the Shadow Man series. Acclaim developed the Shadow Man video game and published Dead or Alive 2 in Europe.
The Japanese Dreamcast version was released on September 28, 2000. The cover art featured Kasumi and Ayane, along with a standard cover art version with Kasumi, Ayane and Leifang. The most notable addition was that Bankotsubo and Bayman were now unlockable, playable in all but Story Mode. The new stages from the PlayStation 2 version were not included, in favor of new versions of Burai Zenin and L's Castle stages from the first game. This version also added Sparring mode for Tag Battle, Watch Mode, the User Profile System, online play, more costumes to unlock, and a Gallery Mode with character renders.
On October 25, 2000, Tecmo released DOA2: Hardcore as a launch title for the PlayStation 2 in America and on December 15, 2000, in Europe. This version was based on the Japanese second update of Dead or Alive 2 for the Dreamcast and featured new playable characters, new stages, extra costumes and introduced the "Gallery" option. The Hardcore release was finally the complete game Itagaki had envisioned at the time, featuring many changes compared to its predecessor: characters, pictures and moves were altered to appear more realistic, lessening the anime-look. Some fighting animations were elaborated upon, while others were cut. New stages were added. More character outfits were added. Overall gameplay speed was increased, and the entire game now ran at a full 60 frames-per-second.
A special "Items Collection" feature and menu section was added to appeal to video game collectors. New artworks were added, and a CG Gallery section featuring renders of the female characters was added. The player history files were enhanced, and now included statistics on how often the player used each character, and tag battle pairing. Several special moves were added, but left undocumented. English voice-overs were added in addition to the original Japanese voice-overs, making it the first game in the series to have English voice-overs. Kasumi can be unlocked as a trainable 'monster' in Monster Rancher 4 by going to the Shrine, and inserting the DOA2: Hardcore disk in the PS2.
Tecmo followed up on the release of Hardcore in the US and Europe with the release of DOA2: Hard*Core in Japan. This last version saw some minor updates, including new cutscenes, a few new costumes, a new turbo speed option, and a second opening sequence which features an English version of the Bomb Factory song "How Do You Feel". This was the last Dead or Alive game to be released for a Sony system, as the series became exclusive to the Xbox until the release of Dead or Alive Paradise, Dead or Alive: Dimensions, and Dead or Alive 5 respectively.
"The Best" and "Platinum" editions of DOA2: Hardcore were released in 2001.