They had this really clean high-res, high-poly look and nice colours compared to the more blocky and blurry looking fighting games on the PS2.
I've been messing around with DOA3 and DOA2U on the XEMU emulator and the resolution here is upscaled 3x so what you're seeing is definitely a lot sharper than it would have been on original hardware, but still. Blown up like this it you could tell me this was a PS3 or Xbox 360 game and I'd believe you.
As much as I like the series for its gameplay and as nice as I think the Xbox games look I've always thought that the weakest part of the DOA games has always been their incredibly bland character design and artstyle. Even though they draw from the same pool of martial arts archetypes and stereotypes as every other fighting game series in existence pretty much every character is much more lame and feels less interesting than their equivalents from Tekken, Street Fighter, etc. Kazuya Mishima has more character in his eyebrows than the entire roster of the DOA franchise.
The female cast is supposed to be the draw 
but on balance the designs aren't that much more hornier than most other Japanese fighting game franchises and the characters in those tend to have some personality to go with the fanservice.
It definitely looked great for the time, it's a shame all it is remembered for is the hornyness. Another game I thought was impressive on the OG xbox was Hitman Blood Money.
I had my mind thoroughly blown by the bump maps, bloom and limited dynamic shadows in Halo 2 even if in retrospect that specific transitional period with blocky low poly assets with sort of advanced effects hasn't aged all that well
From the perspective of someone who doesn't really know how to play fighting games, DOA has always probably been my favourite in terms of playability since even if you're not super good the simple inputs, wall splats, interactive stages and plenty of moves that send your opponent flying halfway across the screen generally make you feel cool
I genuinely love these games for the multi-tiered arenas and tag-team mode. The gameplay also what I call a "dumbed-down Tekken" with every ounce of love I can put it.
But yeah, it's overreliant on the Cheesecake to s point where the game series has increasingly suffered over time.
"dumbed-down Tekken"
One of the reasons I like DOA so much is that compared to Tekken I can actually perform all of the moves in a character's movelist (whether I remember to use all of them is a different thing entirely). I've also been emulating Tekken 4 (my favourite Tekken game, apparently all the competitive types hate it) recently and checking out a character's moves I just immediately give up on a large number of them.
Triangle + X?! Square + Circle?! Neutral inputs?! Four different directional inputs just to do one move?! Go home Namco, you're drunk
Meanwhile I just press different combinations of two buttons in DOA and cool things happen
It's funny that DOA's USP is supposed to be that it's the fighting game series with the sexy ladies. But Tecmo, that's every fighting game series. When SF6 came out my Youtube feed was full of videos of people losing their minds over Chun-Li, Juri and Cammy for weeks
Four different directional inputs just to do one move?!
Show
That's like most grappler characters in general. I've heard SNK games can also get pretty goofy with command inputs.
I also loved these stupid DoA games because they were pretty simple fighting games lol. Being able to pull off the single button counter mechanic made me feel like a fighting game pro as a dumb teenager.
It's funny that DOA's USP is supposed to be that it's the fighting game series with the sexy ladies. But Tecmo, that's every fighting game series. When SF6 came out my Youtube feed was full of videos of people losing their minds over Chun-Li, Juri and Cammy for weeks
Kasumi is literally just Mai Shiranui from KoF in 3d. I think DoA really set the
to the next level by literally making a separate booby bounce sub-engine.I don't find quarter, half or full circles that difficult, and DOA has a couple of those too. You basically do those in one motion. It's when you need to enter several distinct directional inputs where my thumbs start to short circuit, especially when you throw in a couple of pauses and long presses. Given DOA's stint as an Xbox exclusive from 2001 to 2012 the games would have been unplayable on Xbox pads if they had more complex inputs. Pretty sure I always used the analog stick on the original Xbox
Kasumi is literally just Mai Shiranui from KoF in 3d.
This was really apparent when they added Mai into DOA5 as a guest character. But even then Kasumi's a more boring version of Mai- her stance, the giant pompom thing on her outfit and her paper fans have the sort of visual pop that DOA characters lack
Seeing a demo of DoA:Ultimate playing in a blockbuster when I was a kid absolutely blew my mind. It made the best PS2 games look instantly out of date. Couple years later when used Xbox's started getting cheaper I finally got to play it and I spent a lot of time on it. Being 16 and thus prime Dead or Alive-appreciating age helped.
Its important to remember that footage from emulators is not what the final product looked like IRL
Yes, definitely, but even when I was playing these games on an original Xbox hooked up to a CRT I noticed how much smoother and clearer the game looked compared to similar games on the PS2.
Not that higher resolution or polygon count automatically makes a game look better in every aspect- all the characters in these games have really stiff, doll-like faces that can barely emote at all when compared to the PS2 Tekken games
Were those games ever fun to actually play? Was the actual volley ball part well done
Not even boobs could have made me care about a sports game that wasn't Tony Hawk in 2003
Apparently it is well made for a Sports game. These things happen sometimes, like how the Pokewalker was the best podometer on the market at one point.
Guess I can download the ROM
From what I understand the later games increasingly dropped the volley ball aspect and just became collections of wonky beach activity minigames and a single player casino with everything centered on ungodly amounts of grinding for increasingly tinier swimsuits to put on your characters and making them perform canned showering and poledancing animations.
I get the appeal of a fun fighting game with jiggle physics but I don't get whatever that is
DOA3 is one of those games I remember when I think about how my sister always knew she was trans. The way this manifested for her (and many other trans people I've heard) is that she only played female characters when given the choice. In DOA3 she only played Kasumi and Ayane.
But yeah, the game looked good at the time too. Boob physics were too horny, obvi, but it was fun.
Yes, DOA3 was clearly a massive step up from DOA2 on the DC/PS2 in both graphics and scale. I didn't get an X-Box, and that was one of the games I really wanted to try.
Interestingly, DOA4 on the Xbox 360 didn't end up being that big of a leap over DOA3 and DOA2U. It was in widescreen, had bloom lighting and cool materials and shaders but it otherwise felt like an upgraded version of the DOA3 engine.
DOA5 was a complete makeover for the entire franchise. They shifted the artstyle to be slightly more realistic and gave every character more defined and unique facial features, something especially welcome on the female cast who had all suffered very badly from same face syndrome. Then they proceeded to walk all those attempts at realism back on the DLC characters who were the most generic anime waifus the franchise had ever seen. It's my most played game in the series by far but I think the graphics kinda suffered from the seventh gen brown realism trend going on at the time. I honestly prefer the more saturated colours in the Xbox games.
