Dead or Alive = Guilty Pleasure

Dead Or Alive is a fighting franchise well known throughout the video game industry, for ever so controversial reasons (look right) or plain simply awesome fighting mechanics? I say a mixture of both. Dead Or Alive is one of the more frantic fighters in a sense of being able to pull-off endless combination of moves that all seem to string together rather well.

Personally I was introduced to the franchise come Dead or Alive 3 for the XBOX which launched March 14th, 2002 in all European continents including the UK of course. I remember myself being astonished at the time of first playing the game; amazing graphically and an incredibly in-depth fighting system. A good amount of time was spent practising my skills and competing on a regular basis with my brother, good times indeed. Oblivious to me when first playing the game some many years ago was the fact that pretty much every female combatant were overly represented in a way deemed to be sexual.

You would come to think that the series creator Tomonobu Itagaki and developer Team Ninja have a keen eye for certain women assets. The series creator was reported for sexual harassment on a fellow female employee in 2006. Apparently Itagaki had be at it since 2003 with the women in question. Fortunately Itagaki was later deemed innocent of such charges. Not being the judgemental type I couldn't care less about what allegedly happened, as long as Itagaki continued consistently in making great games.

Itagaki did in fact decide to resign from Tecmo for unforeseen reasons and additionally went to go as far as suing the company for withholding a bonus promised for his previous work he had accomplished.

To date I've only been able to get my hands on playing Dead or Alive 3 and 4. The fourth being more visually superior and overall more refined in combat alongside new fighters available. Reading up on latest opinions and reviews about Tecmo's newest release of the franchise Dead Or Alive: Dimensions, I convinced myself for a much earned worthy purchase, and yes regardless of actually looking into buying the title with reviews and so forth in the end I would of most likely given in to my cravings.

Dead or Alive will continue to be one of my most loved fighting franchises, equal to the Soul Calibur series which I cannot get enough of.