The Dreamcast Version Of Dead Or Alive 2 Has Been Unofficially Remastered

"it is even considered to be superior to the PS2 version of the game, which was apparently rushed to market to meet the system's launch date."

The Japanese launchversion yes, but the release history for DOA2 is a complete mess so this comparison only applies to the first ports on each platform when there are two DC and three (perhaps even 4) PS2 versions, all with differences.

The first DC version was the US version, which was based on the Millennium update (presumably the two were developed simultaneously as Millennium only arrived in japanese arcades the month before).

Then we got the rushed PS2 release in Japan which added some extra content.

Then we got the Eu DC version, which had the costumes from PS2 but not the extra stages.

Then we got the Japanese DC release which had a different combination of cut and included extras compared to the other versions.

Then we got DOA2 Hardcore (US) or just DoA2 in EU which had another combination of extra content based on the Japanese DC release.

Then finally the Japanese release of Hard*Core which messed around with the extras again. Making it very difficult to compare them properly because they are all different. The issues with the original PS2 release are not present in the latter versions.

Oh and that EU version of Hardcore? I'm not sure how identical it is to the US version since it came out the day after the Japanese version.

All of these were released within 14 months after the first arcade release. You had one job Tecmo.

@LowDefAl Blimey, I didn't know if was that convoluted! 😅 So is the DC version better? I'm sure I'd heard the PS2 version looked better, had more features and had 60fps cut scenes compared to 30fps on the DC. I wonder if this adds in everything the PS2 version had? (Incidentally the only version I've ever played is the EU DC release).

@BulkSlash LowDefAl could probably elaborate, but from what I remember:

• The Dreamcast and arcade versions have better textures
• The PS2 versions have slightly more natural lighting/fog
• The later releases (such as Hardcore) have slightly better character models (the giveaway is that Kasumi has either octagonal sleeves and braided hair, or round sleeves and a ponytail).
• And of course, that Japanese PS2 launch version is ugly and jagged. I forget the resolution, but probably a 512x240 back buffer, with forced 480i output?

I like the way Hardcore looks, but I think the last Japanese DC release is objectively a bit better, combining the best models and textures.
EDIT: That PS2 lighting, though! I'm undecided. I will say that I think the US PS2 version beats the US DC version, at least.

Dead Or Alive 4 is still the best one.

@smoreon Thanks. I’ll perhaps try to track down a copy of that version! It’s been a long time since I played DOA2.

@BulkSlash
Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate is available to download on the Xbox Series consoles. It's probably the best version you can buy.

@smoreon Oh no, I have to rely on Wikipedia in this case, learning the specifics seemed overly complicated given the mess. I was confused one day so looked it up and regretted it

The jaggies thing was hardly limited to DOA2, there was an issue with early games in general (see also : Tekken Tag which looks vastly better in the non-Japanese versions). I believe this was a limitation of early dev kits/dev enviroments

@UK_Kev Just picked up Ultimate recently, and it still looks amazing, as does 2001's Dead or Alive 3.
Those were wild times: not only did each generation bring mind-blowing graphical improvements*, but even the improvements within a generation were larger than what we'd call a generation leap today!

*The original Super Smash Bros. and Dead or Alive 2 were just one generation apart- and not only that, but they came out the same year, 1999! (The arcade version of DOA2, that is, though the Dreamcast port was a few months later.)

@LowDefAl From my (limited) understanding, the PS2 was able to render 480i games at 240p internally (either 512x240 or 640x240), which helped performance and saved RAM. This meant there was a real incentive for games to be interlaced only!

In contrast, the GameCube and Xbox almost always did full 640x480 or higher, so only supporting interlaced mode (480i) was kind of a waste: in a 60fps game, only half of each frame would get scanned out, and the other half would be wasted, so why not just allow progressive scan so players can see the whole frame?

Additionally, I've heard that Sony allowed and even encouraged devs to use a resolution of just 512x448, even in 480p mode. This again saved on RAM and performance, but made many games like the Ratchet series look noticeably fuzzier. On the other hand, you had a lot of GameCube games going higher than 480p internally for some reason, and many Xbox games even did full-blown 720p!

Early PS2 games' low resolutions, lack of de-flicker, and forced interlacing made for some muddy or jagged-looking graphics, which had a lot of people wondering if the Dreamcast was actually the more powerful console at the time. (And I didn't even mention the PS2's shimmering textures!)

@smoreon
Up until the PS2, consoles' graphics often had their own tricks that other consoles couldn't do. Which led to discussions on which console was more powerful despite the given specs.

The Mega Drive/Genesis was more powerful than the SNES. Yet the SNES had the better display chip.

The N64 was the most powerful 5th gen console. Yet a developer said FFVII would not have looked as good on the N64 as the PS1's graphics were better suited to make FF games. And the Saturn could do 2D better than either the N64 or PS1.

But from the XBox/GameCube onwards, more power usually meant better graphics. From what I understand, the XBox 720p games were just 480p games using an in-game upscaler.

@UK_Kev The old consoles were so interesting, and I think this kind of thing is a big part of that!

I would also include the GameCube, though, as its fixed-function GPU had specific things it could or couldn't do in hardware. This made it more like an old console in some ways, as opposed to the modern-style Xbox. And it could apparently do a lot of tasks and effects faster than the Xbox for this reason, despite being a lot weaker on paper. (In some ways, it kind of parallels the Genesis and SNES, with one having more advanced features, and the other being faster.)

But yeah, it has become a lot more uniform since then. There are still pros and cons to each system, and they have their own quirks, but it's nowhere near what it was before.

Didn't 720p Xbox games usually run in true 720p, or close to it? I know the 360 cheated a lot, though, especially with the supposed "1080p" titles.

@smoreon
Sometimes developers/publishers don't put in the effort to make a good port of a game. Doom on the 3DO being the most obvious example. Currently, the best platform to officially play Silent Hills 2 & 3 on is the PS2.

720p OG XBox games were not native 720p. The developers just added an upscaler option. Sometimes the game's performance would suffer due to the upscaler code running along side the game code.

@UK_Kev Yeah, ports and remasters can be a messy business, even to this day. I'd go as far as to say that almost all of them downgrade something, whether the issue is with graphics, performance, art direction, censorship, or bugs. But that's a whole other topic!
Despite all that, a system two generations out-of-date can receive a feature-complete port these days, which was completely unheard of in the past!

Do you have any sources regarding the OG Xbox's 720p mode? From what I can find, a bunch of games apparently do support true 720p, but there are also quite a few that upscale and/or are only 480p (despite reporting 720p on the back of the box). I've never gotten to try out the system's "HD" modes myself, so I'm just going by what I've read.

@smoreon
Because the websites around at the time no longer exist, it's hard to find anything other than comments.

But from my understanding, the Xbox games that support 720p/1080i had in-game upscalers in their game's code. So you could technically say the games are native 720p. But if you took out the upscaler code, those games would be 480p

Atari Anthology and Dragon's Lair could be genuinely native 720p simply because they hardly use any CPU power to run.

@UK_Kev It's all right, not a big deal.
I was just kind of curious, as everything I'd heard indicated that some/most of these were native 720p (in the actual rendering). For those games that are upscaled- whether that's all of them, or just some- that's a lot less interesting, especially considering the TV can already do that itself!