Dead or Alive Lives on the PlayStation

On Monday, VideoGameSpot test-drove Tecmo's arcade fighting game conversion, Dead or Alive, for the Sony PlayStation. The game is all but finished, though it won't be in stores until late March.

The PlayStation edition looks noticeably different - and decidedly better - than the arcade or the Sega Saturn version that has been available in Japan for some months already. The arcade game runs on Sega's own Model 2 hardware, as seen in Virtua Fighter 2, and features a similar fluid frame rate and a carefully detailed cast of fighters

The PlayStation version abandons the look of its arcade counterpart for a much smoother, more colorful approach that's reminiscent of Square's Tobal 2. Dead or Alive for the PlayStation emphasizes smooth shading and high detail and runs in razor-sharp high resolution at 60 frames per second.

Gameplay is retained intact from the arcade, borrowing heavily from the genre's champions with Virtua Fighter-style punch and kick combinations and Tekken-style reversals and multipart grapples. Two new characters, one a huge Hollywood Hogan-esque pro wrestler named Bass and the other presently unknown, join the original cast of eight, each of whom has dozens of different motion-captured expert martial arts techniques at his or her disposal. Likewise, each fighter comes complete with at least five different outfits.

Meanwhile, a beautifully rendered intro movie and cinematic endings for each character add the finishing touch.

Gone are the plain-looking polygonal backgrounds of the arcade, replaced with Tekken-style 3D floors with static background imagery. But while the backgrounds appear somewhat sparse, the lifelike characters more than make amends.

And of course, the three female fighters in the game retain their arcade counterparts' shameless vigor, and if anything, the effect is now more realistic though by no means less exaggerated.

A number of gameplay modes are available to keep things interesting. These include traditional one-player tournament and versus play, as well as a team battle, survival mode, training mode, and the kumite mode (remember Blood Sport with Jean Claude Van Damme?) where you fight a series of battles and the game determines your win/loss ratio over the course of these.

Dead or Alive was a surprise hit at arcades, and it's all set to take the PlayStation by storm as well with its gorgeous graphics, fast action, and deep gameplay.

Fighting game players waiting patiently for Tekken 3 to hit the PlayStation in late April may well discover a worthy alternative a month earlier with Tecmo's Dead or Alive.