Submission #8207: Natetheman223's Arcade Dead or Alive++ "Ayane" in 04:24.27

At the start of the movie, I access the service menu to change the AI difficulty to max, and also change the language to English.

Bizhawk will tell you the game is a bad dump. It is lying (mame tells me the dump is fine). When dumping footage, bizhawk will also tell you the game is running in 256x240. It is lying (it's 640x480 according to MAME). While the game doesn't have perfect emulation (hence the odd horizontal line toward the center of the screen during gameplay and credits), the dump is fine.

This movie was mainly made as a celebration to MAME being implemented into bizhawk, plus I like cute anime girls sooo...

The movie I've posted in the submission stops on the final input, and also reaches the credits. This is a version of the movie that reaches the end of the credits and then puts a name in the high score board.

Dead or Alive (DOA for short) is a fighting game that was released on Arcade machines sometime in 1996. It then came to PSX in 1998 as a 1.1, and then it came back to arcade AGAIN in 1998, as DOA++ (the ++ is there because the game was converted to C++). For some reason, despite coming out around the same time, ++ has far more QoL changes than the PSX version. In fact, ++ is like DOA 1.5.

Dead or Alive 2 also came out on arcades, and it's much prettier and far more fleshed out, but mame didn't support it so rip.

DOA++ is also less documented and has a number of hidden changes from PSX. The main thing is that there is no accurate command list (move list for those not into fighting games) for characters online, and there's no way to check a character's command list in-game. I did not know this for the early parts of the TAS, following a command list for the PSX version of the game initially. This is why you see me use different moves later in.

Dead or Alive uses a "triangle system". Attacks beat throws, throws beat holds, and holds beat attacks. Normally this creates a guessing game - you hit the enemy, now what? They may try to hold your next move, so should you throw? If you try to throw them but they aren't holding, then your throw misses and it leaves you open - but if they do try to hold, then throwing them does extra damage. But if you attack and they hold, then they counter you.

You're probably wondering what the hell a hold is, and I don't blame you. DOA uses two kinds of holds - offensive holds and defensive holds. Defensive holds can be performed to "catch" an opponent's attack and counter them with an attack of your own. Offensive holds are like throws - trying to throw an opponent who is attacking will usually result in you eating a bunch of damage, but performing an offensive hold to an attacking opponent will grab them through their attack. However, a throw will still out-prioritize and beat an offensive hold.

Defensive holds have 2 "systems". 2 way holds and 6 way holds. If you press hold, you'll get into a position where you can counter middle and high attacks, and if you press down+back (or 1 in numpad notation), you'll get into a position where you can counter low attacks and duck under high ones. If you're ballsy, you can attempt 6 way holds. I'll just let this image speak for itself.

If you do one of the holds in the last column, it's a "pinpoint DH" and will do a unique counter animation and deal pretty good damage... but the thing is, most characters only have one or two pinpoint defensive holds (Ayane only has one for mid punch and mid kick). Attempting a pinpoint DH on an attack that your character does not have a counter animation for will do the weaker 2 way hold instead.

The arcade machine has 3 buttons - hold, punch, and kick.

37 inch bust.

It would be very boring to just do the fastest method of defeating opponents, so I try to keep things spicy by taunting, ducking high attacks, and jumping over lows.

more submission info coming soon, probably

I initially posted this because I wanted to yoink the first spot for a MAMEhawk TAS but with the site recovering from 8 million april fools submissions, the last thing they need is another mid-effort TAS of a 2 minute game