In case you haven't heard, Dead or Alive Ultimate is an upcoming brawler from Tecmo that marks a major high point both for the Dead or Alive franchise and Microsoft's Xbox Live service. The game has been garnering a whole lot of interest, thanks to its promise of online competitive fighting, something Xbox owners have been clamoring for since Xbox Live first launched. We recently had the chance to visit Team Ninja's offices in Japan and talk to series creator Tomonobu Itagaki, who gave us an exclusive look at the game. While we went in with some clear expectations of the game's features, we can confidently say that what we saw nicely surpassed them.

　　Dead or Alive Ultimate unites the tried-and-true DOA fighting formula with tons of nifty new online features.

　　For those not in the know, Dead or Alive Ultimate is a compilation of the first two entries in the series, Dead or Alive and Dead or Alive 2. The original Dead or Alive first appeared in arcades on Sega's Model 2 hardware in 1996 and made some waves at the time for a few reasons. Although Tecmo was an established developer back then, it wasn't really known for its 3D fighters. Dead or Alive was, in fact, the first 3D brawler to come out of the company. More significantly, the game's fighting system, which made heavy use of a counter system, offered a good mix of accessibility and depth. Finally, DOA's 3D engine featured an exaggerated breast bounce for its female characters that ended up garnering its own phrase in Japanese which, literally translated, meant "chest murmur."

　　When it came time for the game to come home to consoles, Tecmo ended up producing Saturn and PlayStation games, though only the PlayStation version made it to shelves in the US. The version of Dead or Alive included in DOAU is a re-creation of the Saturn game, which features such goodies as a bevy of extra costumes, a hidden character, and several different gameplay modes.

　　The game's sequel, Dead or Alive 2, garnered a good deal more acclaim than its predecessor, thanks to a larger cast of characters, improved gameplay, and stunning visuals. As before, DOA2 began its life in arcades--this time on Sega's Naomi hardware--and ended up coming home in several incarnations, including two Dreamcast games and one PlayStation 2 game. The version of Dead or Alive 2 included in DOAU isn't quite the cut-and-dried affair as its predecessor's incarnation. Although the game sports the same basic modes as the various home incarnations of DOA2, Team Ninja has added quite a bit to it, making it more like a "director's cut" of the original game. You'll find new stages, new costumes, new cinematics, and a few extra surprises thrown into the mix in the Ultimate version of the game.

　　Now, while it would have been easy for Tecmo to just pump out the compilation of both titles on the merits of the extra content, Itagaki and Team Ninja have opted to ensure that Dead or Alive Ultimate offers more than a simple history lesson on the series. The core of DOAU, therefore, is its online functionality. While you think you may know what to expect from your typical online fighter, Team Ninja has thrown some cool twists into the mix that will set DOAU apart from the pack.

　　You can play both DOA and its sequel online in Ultimate--but that's only the beginning of the package.

　　The short version is that both DOA and DOA2 are playable online, but Itagaki and his team weren't satisfied with just including a versus mode and the standard Xbox Live game options. In talking with Itagaki, it became clear that he and the team miss the intimate experience of going into an arcade and competing with other players. The team's goal with DOAU is to offer players a virtual arcade experience that builds out on the standard online versus mode. The question of how to bring an experience like that to players via Xbox Live weighed heavily on the team during the game's development and has led them to a very novel solution: Basically, while your core experience is still one-on-one fighting, you can get groups of up to eight players together to fight with, cheer the match on, or just talk smack.

　　So how does it all work? When you first start up DOAU you'll get to the game's main mode selection screen, which will scroll right to left as it has since DOA2. You'll be able to choose to play the original DOA or DOA2, and you can choose the now-standard array of modes, including time attack, survival, tag battle, team battle, versus, sparring, and watch. You'll also find options, such as your battle record, UPS file (the "user profile system," introduced in Dead or Alive 2, that tracks what you do across all the modes in the game), as well as gallery modes to let you check out the computer-generated art and items you'll collect as you play. The game even includes the option to download the booster pack data for your DOA3 save, which was released a while back. However, the big gun here is of course the online mode, titled simply Dead or Alive Online. This is where the real fun begins.

　　When you select Dead or Alive Online, you're asked to choose a username (independent of your Xbox Live gamer tag) that will become your handle when fighting in the game. Once you've picked out your name, you'll find yourself at the main menu screen in DOAU, which features the standard selection of Xbox Live modes: quick match, optimatch, and create a match. You'll also see an option to manage your friends list, change online options, and check out the world rankings for the game (which is sure to be a humbling experience).

　　The ability to cheer--or jeer--players in online matches will bring an intimate arcade feel to DOAU's Xbox Live play.

　　When you go to create a match, you'll get a taste of the game's impressive array of modes and customization options. After you decide if you want to play old-school DOA or modernize things with DOA2, you'll find seven modes to choose from: a standard one-on-one fight, tournament, team battle, survival, loser stays, and kumite. You'll also see a "vote" option that lets the players logged into your session vote on which of the modes they'll want to play. After you select a mode, you'll choose a battle type--single or tag. From there you'll go through and set round time (30 to 99 seconds), match points (two to five), and life-gauge size (normal to largest).

　　Before you start, you'll also set options that affect your overall session. You'll be able to set the number of players able to join your session (three to eight) and, in a nice bit of customization, how many of those slots will be reserved for people on your friends list, thus ensuring the freak content of your games is nil. You'll set the grade level of players you want to compete with (more on that in a second) as well as language (English only or any other language) and online talk options (on or off).

　　Now, about your grades. As we mentioned earlier, DOAU will feature a UPS file that tracks data on everything you do in the game. As you play through DOAU, you'll start to earn a grade level (E, D, C, B, A, S, SS) based on how you do. Your grade will serve to identify your skill level, branding you as everything from noob to badass extraordinaire, and it'll give you a way to find players to compete against that are at your level of expertise.

　　We had the chance to see how the whole shebang works, online and off, at Team Ninja's offices, and we're happy to report that DOAU is one sick little package. The offline versions of DOA and DOA2 played identically to their historical counterparts. DOA2's new stages looked great and featured their own little quirks to give them some unique personality. For example, the rope bridge stage lets you knock your foe off the side and to the ground, while the African plains backdrop features the cast of The Lion King milling about for you to bash your opponents into. However, as cool as the offline stuff was, let's be honest: We were there to play online.

　　Fans of Xtreme Beach Volleyball will get their due in DOAU, too.

　　Using a work-in-progress version of the game, we set up a session with four other members of Team Ninja (a few shy of the game's maximum) and set out to try out the various modes. We were surprised at how well the game handled, even in its incomplete state. After all these years of hearing about how impossible it would be to do a 3D fighter online, we were finally starting to believe all the nay-saying. Thankfully, DOAU has shown us the truth: You can have your 3D cake and eat it online without much trouble. The game moved along at a zippy clip and only hiccuped briefly during two matches. The Xbox Live chat worked well and, language barriers aside, helped give the battles a nice sense of immediacy.

　　The way DOAU's online matches unfold is pretty straightforward. The matches will cycle through whatever options you've set up for a game, and once the mode has run its course you'll be brought back to the main screen with your group, at which point you all can chat about what to do next or just jump right into a new brawl. When we weren't fighting, we were just watching the action unfold; it was nice to be able to manipulate the camera using the analog sticks and shoulder buttons to alter the angle or zoom in while the battle raged. On a less-tangible note, we have to say the watch mode is a great addition, as it will give players a chance to see how their opponents fight, and they can maybe even learn a new trick or two. Really, the only thing missing here is an onscreen quarter to let folks know they're being called out.

　　From what we've seen so far, the graphics in DOA Ultimate range from good to outstanding. The original Dead or Alive falls squarely in the "good" category, with the Xbox capably pumping out an excellent conversion of the 32-bit original without breaking a sweat. Back in the day, the original Saturn DOA was easily comparable to Sega's own stellar port of Virtua Fighter 2, and it packed a serious visual punch.

　　DOAU features both returning and original backdrops in DOA2, and they're downright gorgeous.

　　To be fair, the game still holds up reasonably well. Granted, the textures aren't the prettiest things you'll ever see, but they get the job done, and the frame rate is also good and solid. One thing to note is that the game now features "blink and you missed it" load times that let you zip to your next fight in a flash, which is nice.

　　On the "outstanding" graphical front we have the new and improved Dead or Alive 2, which takes the still-impressive original and gives it a hefty makeover. Thanks to the use of the next generation of the Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball engine, the game's visuals have been bumped up considerably. The end result is gorgeous, high-polygon character models, massive, detailed environments, and slick special effects thrown in to give the arenas life. For example, you'll see swirls of falling cherry blossoms and snowflakes, dramatic lighting effects, reflective surfaces, and all manner of little touches thrown into the visual mix that give everything a nice layer of polish.

　　Put simply, Dead or Alive 2 never looked so good. The inclusion of the new stages, which feature just as much detail as the original DOA2 stages, is a welcome feature that helps to further showcase the outstanding graphics engine. As far as performance goes, DOA2 runs fast and smooth with nary a hitch to be observed in our playtime. When playing online with Team Ninja, we noticed minor hiccups every once in a while, but the team is confident these glitches can be ironed out to ensure that DOAU runs as smoothly online as it does offline.

　　The audio in the game features all the voice, music, and effects fans of the series have come to know and love. All the characters will utter a chunk of phrases to taunt their opponents, gloat over their victory, or mourn their defeat. They'll also let out an array of cries as they fight. The tunes featured in the game will be a mix of classic tracks from the games and a few new songs thrown into the mix to liven things up. A collection of satisfying collisions and assorted blows do a fine job of punctuating the fights, and the game's excellent Dolby 5.1 support helps sell the whole ass-kicking experience by putting you right in the middle of the action.

　　If you're jonesing to hand out some online beatings, keep an eye out for DOAU to hit stores this October.

　　To say that we were impressed by what we saw of Dead or Alive Ultimate would be an understatement--our expectations going into the meeting were met, and then some. Team Ninja's approach toward taking the game online is incredibly smart. The ability to pull together a group of folks to play against and to watch is just awesome. The group experience offered by DOAU is probably the closest thing today's gamers are going to have to the arcade experience many of us grew up with when Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, and Tekken machines drew mobs of quarter-bearing aspirants.

　　Dead or Alive Ultimate is looking like the total online fighting package. The selection of play modes to choose from offers a great variety, and the ability to customize every aspect of your online experience is a much-appreciated extra. If you've been patiently waiting for an online 3D fighter for the Xbox, Dead or Alive Ultimate is likely to be the answer to your prayers. You can pick up DOAU, exclusively for the Xbox, this October. Look for more on the game in the coming months, and until then, check out our exclusive look at the game, including brand-new footage, on our media page.