![]() ![]() I have fond memories of playing DOA2’s four-player tag team mode all night long with my friends, cutting into time we had planned to spend playing GoldenEye 007 and Super Smash Bros. ![]() Including Ninja Gaiden’s Ryu Hayabusa was also a nice touch. My personal favorite character was Jann Lee, the “obviously Bruce Lee” character required for any traditional fighting game. With strikes (punches/kicks) beating throws, counters beating strikes, and throws beating counters, DOA creates a strategically balanced game of Rock-Paper-Scissors that plays out in impressive 3D fistfights.ĭOA2 also had great roster, with plenty of female fighters and lots of ninjas. While most fighting games allow you to block punches & kicks, and have throws to punish opponents who are blocking, DOA adds a great new element in counters-which will catch a punch or kick and counterattack in spectacular fashion. And for me, the best game in the series has always been DOA2 on the Dreamcast. The Dead Or Alive series is more commonly associated with, let’s say, “inventive” breast physics than innovative fighting gameplay-something Tecmo and Team Ninja definitely brought upon themselves-but that’s unfortunate, because the rapid-fire Rock-Paper-Scissors-style gameplay in these games is truly inspired. The year 2000 in particular was one big kung fu party, beginning with Dead Or Alive 2, released in February. Souls & Swords was just the beginning, as Dreamcast quickly became the ultimate game console for the martial arts enthusiast. This provided a very compelling single-player option that more fighting games should try to emulate. By completing missions, you earn points to unlock extra costumes, stages, and other features. We just set the game to infinite rounds and played the exact same matchup for hours.īesides the standard game modes of Arcade and Versus, SC included a great “Mission Battle” mode reminiscent of SFA3’s World Tour. We played so many rounds of SC, always using the same characters-he played Mitsurugi and I used Kilik-and we were so evenly matched, that eventually we decided win rate didn’t matter. While I was a Street Fighter player, he was more into Virtua Fighter, and we never really played many fighting games together. One of my high school buddies bought a Dreamcast and Soul Calibur on Day1, and followed suit not long after. But Soul Calibur was the definitely standout, a must-have game at launch. There were other great games available right away as well-including the universally appealing Crazy Taxi and Madden-killer NFL 2K (which is still my favorite American Football game to this day). ![]() After playing the game once, I rushed out and bought a Dreamcast immediately. I rate Ninjas vs Zombies 3/10, but generously bump it up a point for a couple of brief and utterly gratuitous moments of female nudity: Tara Moore flaunting her curves in skimpy underwear and a busty blonde giving full frontal in a blink and you'll miss it shot towards the end of the film.Soul Calibur was a truly 3D fighting game with such clean, next-gen visuals and fluid animation, it blew our collective minds and became a true system-seller. This, combined with a script that strives to be funny, but which frequently falls flat on its face thanks to poor delivery by an inexperienced cast, results in an admittedly brave attempt by a group of enthusiastic film-makers, but one that consistently betrays its amateur status. ![]() Some of it works (the fights are reasonably fun), but most of it doesn't. Director Justin Timpane's budget doesn't stretch that far, so what we actually get is fight scenes performed by a few guys from the local dojo, make-up and costumes from the fancy dress shop round the corner, and digital trickery courtesy of someone's home PC. To really do such a cool concept justice, one would preferably have martial arts choreography by Donnie Yen, make-up effects by KNB, and visual effects from ILM. I love ninjas and I love zombies, but I don't love Ninjas vs Zombies it's not that I hate the film, per se-I've seen much, much worse-but any film with such an amazingly awesome title yet such a low budget is almost always going to disappoint. ![]()
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