Dead or Alive 2 - Development

Development

The graphics and gameplay were enhanced and based on a better game engine, which allowed the characters and stages to appear less angular and more detailed. A popular and commonly discussed feature, one credited to Itagaki, was the level of graphical detail Tecmo put into the animated breasts of the female characters, as Tecmo went so far as to create a physics engine dedicated entirely to the animation of the female characters' breasts.

Dead or Alive 2 used the song "Exciter"b by Bomb Factory in its opening sequence. Also used as a background track was Deadly Silence Beach and Clumsy Bird. Both tracks can be found on the self-titled mini-album Bomb Factory and on the Dead or Alive 2 Soundtrack.

Two PlayStation 2 versions of Dead or Alive 2 exist, one released only in Japan, titled Dead or Alive 2, and an updated version, titled Dead or Alive Hardcore. Itagaki and his team were only given two month's initially to produce the first PS2 port. At the end of this one of his managers asked to borrow a copy to play, but instead sent in to a production factory. Itigaki was upset by not being able to finish the game on his own terms and fell into a depression during which he briefly considered quitting the industry.

Itagaki and Team Ninja were still dissatisfied with the release versions of DOA2, and continued enhancing it on both the Dreamcast and the PS2 markets as they worked towards their vision of the ultimate fighting game. On October 26, 2000, Tecmo released a last major update titled Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore for the PlayStation 2 which was based on the Japanese and second update of DOA2 for Dreamcast, featuring new playable characters, new stages, extra costumes and introduced the "Gallery" option.

The Hardcore release was finally the complete game Itagaki had envisioned at the time, featuring many changes compared to its predecessor:

• Characters, pictures and moves were altered to appear more realistic, lessening the anime look.
• Some fighting animations were elaborated upon and some were cut.
• New stages were added (eight more than the Dreamcast update).
• More character outfits were added.
• Survival mode now only took place in the "Danger Zone" arena.
• Overall gameplay speed was increased. The entire game, including cut scenes, runs at a full 60 frames-per-second (in the Dreamcast version, the game runs at 60 frame/s while the cut scenes ran at 30).
• A special "Items Collection" feature and menu section was added to appeal to video game collectors. New artworks were added compared to the first update.
• A CG Gallery section, featuring renders of the female characters, was added.
• The player history files were enhanced and now included statistics on how often the player used each character and tag battle pairing.
• Several special moves were added, but left undocumented.
• English voiceovers were added in the U.S. and European PlayStation 2 versions, in addition to the original Japanese voiceovers.

But the graphics are worse than on the Dreamcast and Arcade versions of the game.

The new release extended the success of DOA2 in North America and Western Europe, and Dead or Alive became Tecmo's flagship series.

Tecmo also followed up on the release of DOA2: Hardcore in the USA and Europe with the release of DOA2: Hard*Core in Japan. This last version saw some minor updates, including new cut scenes, a few new costumes, and a new turbo speed option.

As a result, 11 different versions of DOA2 were released, the first two were for the arcade market and the others were home versions. The Dreamcast version has been updated two times, first for the European market with new stages, costumes and cut scenes, and the second time was for the Japanese market with a Limited Edition featuring two new playable characters, two new stages, stage multipart extensions, new costumes, new cut scenes and the "Gallery" option was introduced. This edition was later updated with eight new stages, some new costumes and extra gallery artworks and released as Hardcore edition on the PlayStation 2.

The first PlayStation 2 versions for America, Europe and Japan were updates of the Dreamcast editions, with a few new cut scenes, costumes and stages added on each localization. Comparing the first and the last home versions of DOA2, namely the Dreamcast American edition and the Japanese Hardcore edition, would show a lot of improvements including an enhanced gameplay and a doubled number of stages and costumes. Unfortunately, even with all the changes, Itagaki was still not happy with Hardcore. He is quoted as saying in the DOA 3 booster disc video, "They wanted a launch title in 3 months. I needed 4."