“Congratulations on the Xbox 360 launch!” – Dead or Alive 4

I remember the first time I saw an HD game. It was after the PS3’s launch in 2007 and it was someone playing Motorstorm on a big screen in HMV. Motorstorm is not a game which is widely considered an all-time classic or even particularly gorgeous, but it was a real wow moment. This was not just a clear improvement on how games could look, but a level beyond what I could even imagine them looking like before. It didn’t get me rushing to buy a new console, but it left a strong impression. And having just spent a year playing PS2 games for Super Chart Island, I did get a little bit of that same feeling of gawking in amazement on reaching this first game on an HD console.

Dead or Alive 4 is a slightly odd game to be the first Xbox 360 chart-topper. A fighting game from Japanese developer Team Ninja, it doesn’t fit in any way with the pattern of Xbox #1s here (2 x Tom Clancy, 2 x Star Wars, TOCA, Halo). Similarly at the Xbox 360’s UK launch in December 2005, the biggest seller was Rare’s first-person shooter Perfect Dark Zero, albeit only reaching #12 on an overall chart packed with blockbuster perennials. The UK and the west more generally was not the primary target for Dead or Alive 4. The Xbox did not do well at all in Japan, but did produce one #1 game there: Dead or Alive 3, a launch title in February 2002. The idea was to repeat the trick with its sequel, except that it missed deadlines and had to come out a bit after launch. Hence also releasing the other side of Christmas here, and reaping the benefits of more 360s sold and less competition. There is some irony in the first UK #1 game to be voiced entirely in Japanese being an early success for an American console.

The Xbox 360 would go on to have a much, much wider range of successful games here than its predecessor. Despite Microsoft having a long way to catch up from the previous generation, despite not many people having HD TVs yet, despite appalling console build quality that made its fatal ‘red ring of death’ error infamous, despite the thing not even being able to connect to a wireless internet connection unless you bought an expensive Microsoft peripheral. Despite all of that, it would be a massive success in the UK. 

With Nintendo and Sony not releasing their next consoles here until December 2006 and March 2007 respectively, the Xbox 360 had an early chance to get established. Getting that headstart on the new console generation isn’t always a route to success (ask Sega) but this time it did prove particularly telling. Some of that was in how Microsoft’s focus on their online infrastructure, and their introduction of the metagame of achievements, gave a stronger reason for early adopters to stick with the 360 and try to bring their friends along. It also helped to have a year where their games were so obviously, dramatically better-looking at a glance. 

And Dead or Alive 4 looks amazing. Fighting games can be a great showcase for the visual possibilities of new tech, as the success of Tekken early on in the PlayStation’s life demonstrated. Dead or Alive 4 has lots of fantastic colourful stages filled with detail and frequently searing neon. Its mechanics work with those to up the spectacle still further, too. Hit your opponent far enough in the right direction and you can knock them right off a section, inflicting damage and moving the fight to a new part of the arena. Watching them tumble downstairs or into the water before your character leaps down after them is a great way of breaking up and progressing the contest. The nature of the fighting, with its simple commands, quickly accumulating combos, and powerful blocks for rapid reversals fits the visual spectacle nicely, big text marking every event and all. Better graphics alone are a terrible thing for games to chase as a way of progressing, but this is one place where they feel particularly central to the experience.

Then there’s the characters themselves, where we move inevitably onto the one thing which I knew about Dead or Alive coming in. The characters are not exactly realistic, but there are some details which excel beyond the backgrounds. The rainbow shimmer of Leifang’s cheongsam as she moves is a gorgeous detail, and beyond what would have been possible even in cutscenes of prior games. “Stunning costumes” is one of the points of appeal listed on the back of the game’s box. It is followed by “the ever-lovely DOA ladies”, with the last two words in extra-large text.

Better-animated human characters are one of the most obvious things to do with better technology. People like stories about people, and like looking at people. But the world of video games by 2006 had built up pretty strong assumptions as to whose bodies exactly its players would consider acceptable to admire, and that meant (certain types of) women. Look back to the PS2 being introduced with Reiko Nagase, or to Square Enix’s foray into cinemas being promoted with breathless wonder at the photorealistic hair of Dr. Aki Ross. Or, closer to home, look at the breakthrough new 3D games character being Lara Croft. Beyond that, of course, look back over centuries and more of art and culture. It’s not exactly just a games thing.

But within games, we have the Dead or Alive series, which had already had its infamous beach volleyball spin-off by now, and “the ever-lovely DOA ladies”. When you pick one of them on the character select screen, it is commemorated by an exaggerated bounce of their breasts. It’s indefensible, embarrassing, and the series was an easy target for good reason. On the other hand, after a year of relentless male gaze via invisible assumed-male player characters, capped off with WWE Smackdown! Vs. Raw 2006’s Fulfil Your Fantasy mode, Dead or Alive 4 is also… not those. 

The women are very much the active stars of the show, even if there are men you can play as too. And as much as Dead or Alive 4 is built to let the expected player enjoy looking at them in revealing outfits, it is also very obviously written with the expectation that you should be invested in them as characters and in their stories. Whether that be Kasumi fighting against a translucent clone of herself produced by an evil corporation, or Hitomi and Leifang coming to blows over the last cabbage at the market. “Frequently treats women as people” is a ridiculously low bar to clear, but in the context of its peers at the top of the UK charts it honestly feels a little refreshing that it does.

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Top of the charts for week ending 28 January 2006:

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