Free Step Dodge

We might not be on the main stage, but we will be at EVO. Big E, one of our biggest supporters outside of Team NINJA and one of the most prolific Tournament Organizers in the country, is working to put on a "side tournament" at EVO. I use quotes because this man isn't a side tournament kind of guy. This is all extremely early but there is already aggressive movement to make this an impactful event at EVO. Lines are open and parts are moving to make this successful. From Big E himself on one of the Facebook groups:

Ok we didn't make it this year but I want to have a side tournament at EVO. We have to show them we belong at Evo 2016. They watch every major that Doa is at so we have to step up big time this year. It starts at Winter Brawl 9. I need everyone's help. Who's behind me? I WANT TO GET GREAT NUMBERS AT EVO. Let's show the POWER OF DOA FGC.

Click to expand...

The conversation has already brought up possibly working with MarkMan of MadCatz and other options will, of course...

Releasing a day earlier than its original January 15th reveal date (all in part to yesterday's scan/screenshot leaks), here is the official reveal trailer for Honoka, "a sweet, easygoing kind of girl," Koei Tecmo subtly points out.

Her fighting style looks strikingly similar to a few of the cast members, doesn't it?

Eric Small of @BigE Gaming recently made an announcement on Facebook that the next big DOA5 event, Winter Brawl 9, will be played on PlayStation 4. Previously, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round was set to play on the PlayStation 3 so this is an interesting change as it sets the tone for the first Last Round tournament event.

Winter Brawl 9 will be taking place on February 20th to the 22nd at the Clarion Hotel & Conference Center (76 Industrial Airport, Essington, PA 19029). Be sure to pre-register for the event if you'd like to participate in the first Dead or Alive 5 Last Round major tournament. High pre-registration numbers determine not only the pool sizes and times, but also the streamers and stream times for the game. Help the community by getting Last Round shown off on the big stage...

There are several massive events on the horizon for our community and a lot of you have had some pretty legitimate questions come up regarding things. More of you have had some completely insane questions, so if you fall into that particular camp, pass right on by. For the rest of you, we've been able to work out something I'm going to avoid calling an interview for a variety of reasons. That non-interview will be with Team NINJA directly.

We could have just whipped up a quick Q&A and posted it as an article, but we wanted to try something a little different. Those of you who've been around for a long enough time may have seen something similar in the past, but this is a different situation we're working with in 2015. We're going to open this up to all of you guys to ask the questions here. Before you get too excited, though, let's lay some ground rules.

First, we have to respect the fact that the Team has a plan in place for the new character regarding the media. You have to...

This highly-competitive event with a $500 pot prize was an entertaining event to watch. Kwiggle further proves his skill by showing a nice level of character diversity in his tournament play against what many players would say were difficult opponents. For example, his use of Rachel against Lopedo and his display of an underestimated Kasumi against E-mann was great to see. It should not be understated that this event was a very good competitive event, and to continue seeing the trend from last year's North-East Championships of new players showing off their skills was amazing. If anything, these new players coming into the scene is great to see if for anything else but to show other players hesitant of participating that jumping in is rewarding.


With KiT15 ending, the next big major tournament to look out for would be Winter Brawl 9 in Philadelphia, PA on February 20th to 22nd at the Clarion Hotel &...

So, today we got some new details from Famitsu on Last Round special editions and some DLC (which is included in the trailer). It's also worth mentioning that the DLC will be for first print buyers in Japan. It includes 4 short films, and 4 bikinis for the newer girls. I expect them to be paid DLC in the future if you want them that bad, much like the Ryu and Momiji outfits from the Yaiba incentive.

Breaking down the SE contents there are a few packs to choose from, and the descriptions are too good not to share...

The Last Round Strongest Package (25,800 ¥):

• Game soft body (not sure what this means) maybe the game case is soft...
• Soft Sexy Costume for 18 girls though the translations said "species."
• Dead or Alive History Book
  
• DOA5 Original Soundtrack Vol. 4
• Marie Rose 3D Mouse Pad (tits) (LOL)
• Life Sized Kasumi Tapestry (check it out)...

For those looking to buy an arcade stick for Dead Or Alive 5 Last Round, here's some good news for you. It seems that Hori is releasing a special, DOA5 Last Round themed arcade stick that works for both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
The arcade stick also comes with a coupe of new features not seen in other arcade sticks. First up, it has analog sticks. These are attached to where the carrying handle is in the XBox One RAP Hayabusa. However, the placement seems to indicate that they may be removable.

The other unique feature that this has is a touchpad, something that no other PS4 3rd party peripheral has.

For more details on the pricing and where you can pre-order this, read the whole story over at...

E-Mann took out some serious competition last month at Absolute Battle 5, beating Master and Sweet Revenge on multiple occasions. His Helena and Christie are vicious, and this man is on fire. Let’s read what he has to say.



DOAN: How do you feel about your recent tournament win? Taking out Master, and Sweet Revenge out of a tourney is no easy task.

E-Mann: I agree it wasn't easy; words cannot describe how awesome I felt when I won Absolute Battle 5. It’s been ages since my last tournament win. It’s not a walk in the park to take out players like Master and Sweet Revenge ESPECIALLY with Helena, a character they both have major experience fighting against thanks to XcaliburBladeZ and Mamba in recent tournaments.

DOAN: What was your...

In this short interview from @Gill Hustle he talks to young Bladez about his tournament win with Eliot. It was a big win for the young champ as he had not won a tournament since Summer Jam 7 back before Ultimate had released.

He also reps new blood: @Saion (Marie Rose) @Nestor Collazo (Brad Wong)

You can also check out the most complete tournament video to date... The Summer Jam 8 Movie from Gill. Let's keep supporting our players and content creators, DOA community!

DOA5U's DLC lifespan lasted from the beginning to the end. From cops to nurses to... reindeer we have seen it all. Which can make one wonder, what will we see for Last Round? Will they start releasing bad ass clothes for more of the males like we would all like, or will they continue creating various fetish outfits that don't really add up to the individual characters?

Either way, I think they will need to change their DLC lineup for LR to keep the fans interested, as nobody seems interested in their last offering. Guess we will find out next year, but for now it's ribbons and reindeer, folks!

North East Championships 15 took place over the weekend in Philadelphia, PA, and the Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate tournament has ended. A lot of interesting things happened at the fifteenth anniversary of NEC with the last DOA5U major tournament in 2014. Tournament entry was free with a $1000 prize ($500 from donations to Free Step Dodge and $500 from Team NINJA).

Before I go on to the tournament, during the Top 8 on Sunday Eric Small of @BigE Gaming shared with @Katsu Hayami a message from Tom Lee of Team NINJA. Tom's message goes on to say that due to Katsu's relentless support for the Dead or Alive Competitive community, Team NINJA is donating $500 towards Katsu's medical bills he has been stuck with during his time of need. If you'd like to donate to help Katsu more, please follow proceed to Go Fund Me for more details...

The brackets will be available soon, but for now we have the pool information. Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate has 41 players this year, and while it's not the highest we beat Tekken Tag 2 out and it is respectable for this year's last major, and with a new installment on the way.

You can look forward to seeing some new talent at this tournament, as well as some veteran players such as your TFC '14 champion, Kwiggle, Sonic Fox, Jaegar and Perfect Legend. This isn't a tournament to sleep on.

Current Brackets: Pool E23 | Pool E22 | Pool D23 | Pool D22

Dead or Alive 5: Last Round page has gone live on Steam. You can actually save 10% off the final cost by pre-ordering your digital copy at this time. Some other information was released if you read the page over.

Additionally, at this time, it looks like the game only has the attribute of Single Player. I am not sure if this is due to the site just going live or not, but my money is on that. I cannot honestly expect they'd release it for PC for only a single player experience. Also, there's a note on the page saying, "Online modes for Dead or Alive 5 Last Round will be added in a patch within 3 months of release." which as written gives the impression it will be offline only. It should also be noted that in a previous interview, Team NINJA mentioned support for the game (no specific platform specified) will be done post-release...

The new female character was teased with a brief shot in the latest trailer released by Team Ninja, showing off some of the day 1 DLC costumes available in exclusive bundles.

Also of note is the Steam logo displayed at the end of the trailer, officially confirming a PC release alongside the already announced consoles.

The English trailer can be viewed below, with a link to the original Japanese one here.




A date is set at the end of the trailer. "1/15/15" This could be an indication for the full reveal date of the new character.

In less than three days we will be moving on to our next NEC. A DOA tournament staple, where great fights ensue, and also where legends are made. It was two years ago that XcaliburBladeZ emerged with a victory over Shade using his Alpha-152, a character that was said to be horrible in Vanilla. Oh, how we've changed as a community since the release of DOA5.

All of your NEC 15 questions can be answered in our thread, or you can go to Big E Gaming's site to figure out your registration, your schedule... and shortly pools.

Stream:

Semis Saturday 7-10 PM EST
Bifuteki

Finals Sunday 12-3 PM EST
Kick-Punch-Block

Pointed out to us by @grap3fruitman and posted on popular gaming forum NeoGAF, Tomonobu Itagaki, our long-favorite and past DOA producer, had some recent words to share in regards to his thoughts on the current state of DOA and what he thinks of Team Ninja in their current state.

Let's just say, he didn't really have anythinig quite nice to say about DOA: Dimensions.

Here's what Itagaki had to say:

There are a couple points that we do seem to disagree on though, "user X".
You say that DOA5 was the start of the problems (or nightmare?), but I think it started with DOAimensions. I could sense it just minutes after turning the power on, and I immediately had to turn it off. Combos aren’t something that you do with a touch panel.

Click to expand...

There is not an official publication of this discussion. The NeoGAF poster reports that this came from a...

Update: Trailer has been released!


Famitsu has announced that one of the two new characters is the Dead or Alive boss Raidou. He has been altered for his appearance in Last Round. His body has been augmented to cybernetic technology. He's not the same ninja he used to be, but Raidou displays a big build, electric moves and a cyborg body. If you thought he looked evil before... just look at him now. A menacing face, a darker tone, and the cyborg attributes really add an even scarier aspect to the Dead or Alive boss.

His story is as follows:

After being killed by an explosion during the First
Dead or Alive Tournament, Raidou was pieced back together,
outfitted with cybernetic parts, and brought back to life by
Donovan. As a side effect he has lost all memories of his past,
and retains only his natural lust for power.

Fighting Style:
Raidou's fighting style is Mugen Tenshin Ninjutsu at its core,
but he builds upon this with techniques he has...

Click to expand...

Congratulations go out to @E-Mann for winning Absolute Battle 5 on 11.16.2014. Not only was this a clutch tournament, but there was more emerging talent (on stream) from Reaper's deceptive Brad Wong, to T-Boy's well calculated Ein.

E-Mann, didn't have an easy time getting his tournament victory: taking out Sweet Revenge and Master... two seasoned veterans of the series. You can check out the brackets on Challonge. I'm also including the Grand Finals, thanks to @D Glock for the media post. (EDIT: Top 4 was taken down from Youtube. I will have it back as soon as I get another copy).

VentureBeat's games-focused channel GamesBeat has just posted the second part of an interview involving Team NINJA Creative Director Tom Lee, Director Yohei Shimbori, and Producer Yosuke Hayashi. We get a really solid discussion on game balance from Shimbori-san, Tom goes into the games portrayal of women and even GamerGate (in a truly eloquent way, no less), and Hayashi even drops a bit about the long-in-development Ni-Oh. I'll let you guys click through to the two-part interview below and then discuss in the comments.

Part 1
Part 2

Registration Information

This weekend Absolute Battle will commence again, and Dead or Alive 5 will continue to be on the roster of games this Saturday from 2:00pm – 7:00pm and on Sunday from 1:00pm – 4:00pm.

The following streams to keep an eye on:

twitch.tv/PandaXGaming | twitch.tv/SaltyMayhem | twitch.tv/VersusGameplay

If you've been playing on Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate through the Core Fighters iteration, you might be interested to know that Hitomi is now a free character TO KEEP for a limited time. Core Fighters has offered various character trials since release, but now they offer you the free gift of Hitomi.

Keep playing, guys! Hitomi is a great character for beginners because of her tools and simple button inputs... but in her simplicity is a steep learning curve for competitive play.