It's funny to think this was enough to launch an entire franchise back in the 90s
I was scrolling through a list of PS1 roms and realised I'd never actually played the original DOA, having started with the series with the PS2 port of DOA2. I gave it a go in DuckStation and the boob physics are distractingly funny on these low-poly models
The game feels pretty clunky and primitive (which is not that surprising since it came out in arcades in 1996) and it looks like most of the things that make these games fun to play (the four button punch/kick/throw/counter system, interactive multi-tier stages with hazards, breakable walls and objects & fast-paced combat where most attacks send your enemy flying at mach 2 right into the things I just listed) were introduced in Dead Or Alive 2
Hope the image host works, not sure where to put mp4s now that imgur requires a login
I think they added the new ones from DOA3, but they only had karate Hayate (no ninja Hayate). Other than that, it should be DOA2 in the DOA3 engine.
I remember there being dozens of stupid costumes to unlock. Probably good fun for an afternoon or two whenever the emulation catches up.
I decided to try XEMU again on the latest version and it's almost there on both games. The gameplay is smooth with no visible graphical glitches and I could even bump the internal resolution to 3x with no discernible effect on framerate.
Here's what they look like running ideally:
DOA3
DOA2 Ultimate
Unfortunately certain 2D particle, screen and stage effects completely tank the framerate and so do big sweeping camera angle changes during replays and story mode cutscenes.
Here's what that looks and sounds like
Still pretty impressive. You also weren't kidding about it being DOA2 in the DOA3 engine, they look and play the same and have the exact same main menu