Yohei Shimbori: Alive And Kicking

Dead Or Alive’s chief ninja tells oxm about his long involvement in the ‘intense fighting entertainment’ franchise, keeping every kind of fan happy and how being a ‘fighter’ is the perfect quality for a game designer

- Chris Burke

Team Ninja’s fighting series has a long history on Xbox, Dead Or Alive 3 having been a launch exclusive for the original Xbox, and with DOA4 and the series’ Xtreme spin-offs all appearing exclusively for Team Green. The series’ apparent focus on its beautiful female fighters and their many revealing costumes, not to mention the hyper-realistic boob jiggle physics, has led many to overlook the games as serious fighters – particularly as attitudes to such things have changed massively in the last couple of years. But as anyone who’s played a Dead Or Alive game knows, the depth and potential for complexity offered by the series’ fighting mechanics, with a vast range of combos and possibilities for counters and recoveries, make it by far the most strategic fighting game out there. It’s still a hugely fun arcade-style experience, though, with a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ triangle (strikes beat throws, throws beat holds, holds beat strikes) at its core. It also has an esteemed videogame heritage. Influenced by Sega’s pioneering Virtua Fighter series, it has featured characters from that game in its roster, as well as Ryu Hayabusa and others from Tecmo and Team Ninja’s brilliant Ninja Gaiden series. Further cementing its place in Xbox game history, DOA4 even featured a character from the Halo universe – Spartan-458, aka Nicole, who came back in time via a bubble in the space-time continuum.

Yohei Shimbori is the man principally responsible for the Dead Or Alive series for the last few years, having been involved in the design as part of Team Ninja since Dead Or Alive Ultimate 15 years ago. As producer and director for the latest entry,