#984

A playthrough of the hidden character Ein in Tecmo/Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive 3.

Dead or Alive 3. Goddamn. This is where the series starts to shine. Maybe not so much in terms of actual gameplay; it’s a lot more forgiving and beginner-friendly than DOA2 was, and with a greater freedom of movement and less emphasis on combos is more comparable to SoulCalibur than anything else in terms of just how beginner-friendly it is. Here’s the thing though. DOA3 was a launch title for the original Xbox. Even now, with HDMI the game still manages to look absolutely beautiful. It’s incredible, and a real testament to how incredibly the original Xbox was a console.
This also marks another interesting development for the series however.

For some reason, Team Ninja decided that they wanted to make Dead or Alive an Xbox-exclusive series from this point onwards. I’ll get into this more during the DOA4 vids, but the Xbox has always struggled with brand recognition. The only two series which have really come to define it are the originally sublime (though now rather mediocre) Halo series, as well as the decent but forgettable Gears of War series. You also have Forza, which is some good shit, but not really iconic in the same way that a Mario or a Sonic is. The move towards multi-platform gaming as a standard first in the 6th and then even more so in the 7th generations of gaming has only compounded this identity crisis and ended up leaving the Xbox and the Xbox 360 as great video game consoles which ultimately felt as if they lacked a true focus or direction, especially when it came to exclusives. As a result, Team Ninja attempted to aid this by delivering a number of high-quality, exclusive titles to the Xbox in order to improve its brand recognition. Did it work? Well, yes and no. Team Ninja developed and released DOA3, as well as DOA Ultimate, and eventually their Magnum Opus, the beloved but extremely difficult reboot of Ninja Gaiden. I’ll more into that game in DOA4 (it’s a bigger influence on it than you might think), but it’s commonly regarded as one of the best games on the original Xbox, and for good reason too.

The problem, however, is that this meant that an Eastern company attempted to win over an audience of Western gamers, which has always remained the Xbox’s primary focus, and part of the reason why it’s never done that well in Japan. Sega also tried this with titles such as Shenmue 2, SpikeOut Battle Street, Crazy Taxi 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta and numerous others; all fantastic games and ones which are beloved on the system, but not ones which are really iconic per say. As a result, Team Ninja played for a team which never fully appreciated them, and as a result ended up eventually branching into multi-platform games like so many other companies.
I say all this because it’s important to contextualise what DOA3 means as a title. Team Ninja wanted to bring people to the Xbox with this game, as it did with its other titles. It not only wanted to gain a foothold in that exclusivity market, but also come to define the console itself. Which it half-did and half-didn’t, given the aforementioned Western focus which the Xbox has always had. This leaves a brilliant game being exclusive to a console which it really isn’t suited to.

DOA3’s release had other drawbacks, however. DOA3 was actually pushed out prematurely for the American market and led to lacking numerous costumes and extras it was originally supposed to have. The Japanese version and the European version (which I own) were released later and so don’t have this issue, as they had this content included by the time of their release. Given that one of DOA’s main components is its unlockable costumes, DOA3 as a result is one of those fantastic games which unfortunately is a pretty barebones experience. A shame too, considering how good a game it is. It doesn’t ruin much on the whole however, as this is easily one of the most fun fighting games I’ve ever played. As I said in DOA2U, gameplay for this engine is extremely fluid and one of the most pick-up-and-play systems I’ve ever seen for a fighting game. Couple that with even more detailed, larger stages and you’ve got a pretty amazing fighting game. I’d never played this game until I started my videos on this series, so in that way it was extra special to see something I’d known of but not about for so many years. Entering into an unknown world as it were, which is one of the greatest joys you can get from retro gaming.

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