DOA Ultimate: Hands-On, Gameplay Videos

Before leaving Tokyo we managed to grab these beauties - nine unmissable 60fps showfloor videos, along with a fantastic 5-minute direct feed story scene.

These exclusive videos and gameplay grabs from Tecmo's Dead or Alive Ultimate may not be direct feed but they're quite probably the only way you'll get to see some of the astonishing new fighting stages and costumes in action. You are looking at what must surely be the most attractive fighting game ever made.

Thought it looked good? These vids prove it's the best looking fighter ever, as we reveal new stages like the burning theatre.

At the recent Tokyo Game Show, Dead or Alive Ultimate was clearly the centre point of Tecmo's always lively exhibit, and for that matter, one of the bigger attractions at neighbouring Microsoft's Xbox booth as well.

The build that was playable at the show offered all fifteen characters set to appear in the final game, with all previous characters (do correct us if some fighters dropped from the series?) plus the playable addition of ugly chump man, Tengu.

Bikini Hitomi and miniskirt Hitomi on best fighting stage ever?
Yes, we'll have some of that.

The girls all have ten costumes each in total, including some of the sexier numbers such as bikinis and schoolgirl costumes, as seen in some of our videos. Meanwhile, the boys have anything from six to nine different outfits, while newly playable ex-boss Tengu has three choices of fashion.

These stages will blow your head off!

Unfortunately the online portion of the game was not playable, which is unfortunate since it will clearly one of the main attractions when the game finally hits shelves. However, as creator Tomonobu Itagaki claimed in our recent interview, the online section is virtually indistinguishable from real-time local play.

These showfloor gameplay videos show off several new background stages in the game, including the phenomenal burning theatre stage, along with the recently unveiled African wildlife environment and even a disco of some kind. In addition several awesome stages make their return such as the jaw-dropping thunderstorm courtyard - and nearly all of these stages appear to have multi-level fighting, where a fighters are knocked down to totally different terrains where they continue to battle - some all-new examples of this are evident in the videos too.

We took some stills of the game in order to give you an idea of the content of the videos - which are all offered at sixty frames per second and will require a decent PC with either Windows Media Player 9 or 10 for best playback results - although of course the game looks much better in direct feed, which we're aiming to provide nearer to the game's release.

And as if the nine gameplay videos here were not enough, we've also got hold of a sensational, lengthy direct feed of the game's opening story sequence, explaining some of the background to the story before the tournament started, depicting some of the girls in their teenage years. Mmmm.

As well as the gameplay vids, we've got this fantastic five minute story sequence in direct feed.

One worry remains lingering over the Team Ninja masterpiece, and that's concerning the game's release date. The Japanese release of the game was recently pushed back from October 7th to later this month, October 28 - and although the US release is still scheduled for October 19th, we have a slightly uneasy feeling about whether it is guaranteed, given previous slippages. We hope that feeling is unfounded of course. Meanwhile, a European release from Microsoft is not scheduled until April 2005 at the earliest.

We've included these two new official shots for good measure.

Stay tuned for lots more on DOA Ultimate - and for tonnes more details, screens and videos, including all the trailers, click here.

Update (Oct 15th): Additional new screens added here!

Adam Doree
Editorial Director, Kikizo.com