Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Playthrough with Ayane. The PS1 version of Dead or Alive was released in 1998. It’s more than just a port of the arcade game, as it adds two extra playable characters, new music, new backgrounds and more. The two new characters are Bass and Ayane. Bass is unlocked from the start, but Ayane has to be unlocked. She and Raidou are the two hidden characters.
Raidou isn’t too hard to unlock, you just have to complete the game with every character. Ayane, however, takes far longer to unlock -you have to unlock every costume for every character, which requires you to complete arcade mode multiple times. Every time you beat the game, you unlock an extra costume. It’s not too bad for the guys, as they mostly only have two extra costumes each. For the ladies it’s much more time consuming though -Kasumi, Lei Fang and Tina all have 11 unlockable costumes each. And then when you do unlock Ayane, she’s also got 11 unlockable costumes. Some of the unlockable costumes are quantity over quality -the outfits are the same, but just have different colors.
Now, the reason unlocking the costumes is so hard is because of how horrendous the CPU is in this. It’s a ‘90s 3D fighter, which were notorious for having cheap AI -Virtua Fighter, Tekken, they were mostly all bad for it. What elevates Dead or Alive is just how blatantly the CPU cheats. The input reading is ridiculous, they usually won’t simply block a move, they’ll counter it perfectly instead. And the damage in this game is also out of control, for example Bass has a throw which can take off 80% of your life bar alone. This game also has a “holds” counter system, which of course the CPU abuses the hell out of. Unfortunately, Ayane’s kickflip isn’t as good as Kasumi’s. You can quite easily beat this game with Kasumi just by spamming kickflip:
youtube.com/watch?v=a_whHcssQvI
One thing I noticed is that moves frequently seem to lack hitboxes when you do them -maybe this is another example of CPU cheating, but the amount of times I tried a basic punch with certain characters (like Tina) and her moves just didn’t connect was infuriating. With Ayane, once you’re at the halfway mark, you’ll want to pretty much only want to use her kickflip and QCF+K moves.
I got to fight Ayane as well. I’m not sure on what the exact requirements are (different sites list different things) but my understanding is that if you get to and defeat Kasumi in under six minutes, you’ll get to fight Ayane before Raidou. You have to be playing on the normal difficulty or higher as well, if you play on easy she won’t appear.
Playthrough with Ayane. The PS1 version of Dead or Alive was released in 1998. It’s more than just a port of the arcade game, as it adds two extra playable characters, new music, new backgrounds and more. The two new characters are Bass and Ayane. Bass is unlocked from the start, but Ayane has to be unlocked. She and Raidou are the two hidden characters.
Raidou isn’t too hard to unlock, you just have to complete the game with every character. Ayane, however, takes far longer to unlock -you have to unlock every costume for every character, which requires you to complete arcade mode multiple times. Every time you beat the game, you unlock an extra costume. It’s not too bad for the guys, as they mostly only have two extra costumes each. For the ladies it’s much more time consuming though -Kasumi, Lei Fang and Tina all have 11 unlockable costumes each. And then when you do unlock Ayane, she’s also got 11 unlockable costumes. Some of the unlockable costumes are quantity over quality -the outfits are the same, but just have different colors.
Now, the reason unlocking the costumes is so hard is because of how horrendous the CPU is in this. It’s a ‘90s 3D fighter, which were notorious for having cheap AI -Virtua Fighter, Tekken, they were mostly all bad for it. What elevates Dead or Alive is just how blatantly the CPU cheats. The input reading is ridiculous, they usually won’t simply block a move, they’ll counter it perfectly instead. And the damage in this game is also out of control, for example Bass has a throw which can take off 80% of your life bar alone. This game also has a “holds” counter system, which of course the CPU abuses the hell out of. Unfortunately, Ayane’s kickflip isn’t as good as Kasumi’s. You can quite easily beat this game with Kasumi just by spamming kickflip:
youtube.com/watch?v=a_whHcssQvI
One thing I noticed is that moves frequently seem to lack hitboxes when you do them -maybe this is another example of CPU cheating, but the amount of times I tried a basic punch with certain characters (like Tina) and her moves just didn’t connect was infuriating. With Ayane, once you’re at the halfway mark, you’ll want to pretty much only want to use her kickflip and QCF+K moves.
I got to fight Ayane as well. I’m not sure on what the exact requirements are (different sites list different things) but my understanding is that if you get to and defeat Kasumi in under six minutes, you’ll get to fight Ayane before Raidou. You have to be playing on the normal difficulty or higher as well, if you play on easy she won’t appear.
