Without Buxom Stars, 'Dead or Alive' Is Plain

By AARON CURTISS

Aug. 10, 1998 12 AM PT

As with any industry, video game designers have to understand their market. And despite all the hoopla over how video games have become mass entertainment, the hard-core player falls into one of just two similar demographic categories: 14-year-old boys and men who think and act like 14-year-old boys.

It’s these players--a group that titters at words like, well, “titter”--that game makers go out of their way to impress with ever more inventive ways to dismember a foe, ever sharper images of unspeakable agony, a few butt jokes to lighten things up and a parade of video vixens of impossible proportions.

For better or--usually--worse, violence and sex help drive sales as designers pray for positive buzz from hard-core players to propel a title into the larger marketplace. “Tomb Raider’s” busty Lara Croft, for instance, wouldn’t be the star of a Hollywood movie had she not first impressed her fickle male audience of video game players.

Like “Tomb Raider,” Tecmo’s “Dead or Alive” sits at the intersection of these two video game paradigms. In this game, the result is a disturbing convergence of bone-crushing hand-to-hand combat and bloodthirsty babes in tight shirts.

“Dead or Alive” for Sony PlayStation is the first game I’ve played in which the option menu--which normally allows players to adjust features such as difficulty and match-length--includes the ability to toggle a “bouncing breast” feature.

Yes, you read it right. Players can adjust the bounce-ability of the three main female characters--from no movement to perpetual motion. Degrading? Yes. Insulting? Yes. Popular with gamers? Sadly, yes.

As I played “Dead or Alive,” I kept wondering whether I ought to hide it under the mattress lest the wife catch a glimpse. Instead, I turned off the distracting bounce feature and tried to focus on the game’s other attributes.

It was tough. Without the bounce feature, “Dead or Alive” is just another bare-knuckles fighter. The fighting graphics are nice. The action is swift. The arsenal of moves is big and easy to learn.

Everything unfolds as a good fighter should, even if sometimes it unfolds in Japanese. It’s a peeve of mine, one that has earned the scorn of some readers who accuse me of ethnocentrism. But if someone shells out $40 for a video game promoted and packaged entirely in English, the voices of the characters ought to be in English as well.

Instead, players of “Dead or Alive” are treated to characters such as Tina, an American professional wrestler who disses her opponents in perfect Japanese. It’s odd, to say the least. After a while, it’s annoying. Buyers of games clearly marked as imports should expect languages other than their own, but everyone else plopping down their cash deserves to have foreign ports translated.

Bored Game: Any notion that chess is a game for arrogant Russian geniuses should die after a few minutes with “Virtual Chess 64,” a simple simulator that offers a little something for novices and grandmasters alike.

The only odd thing about “Virtual Chess 64” is its platform. Nintendo 64 suffers a dearth of cerebral games, but “Virtual Chess 64” seems oddly out of place as the title to fill that void. Given N64’s graphic oomph, “Virtual Chess 64” should have looked better.

The one concession the game makes to graphic appeal is a series of boring animations that pop up whenever a piece gets taken. Absent that, “Virtual Chess 64” looks and plays like a simple 32-bit game. Not that chess requires a bunch of fancy graphics, but isn’t that what Nintendo 64 owners expect?

For novices, the game offers an instructive walk-through covering the rules of chess and a few general strategy tips. Parents wanting to introduce their kids to the challenge of chess might want to take a look.

Players looking to let their Nintendo 64 cool down after the graphic intensity of a game such as “Banjo Kazooie” might dig “Virtual Chess 64” for a little solo strategy. But if a human opponent is available, it beats playing against the game.

‘Tomba’-Foolery: When a game strives to do everything, it ends up not doing any of them very well. Case in point: “Tomba,” a confusing side-scrolling/adventure/role-playing game that follows the travels of a pink-haired cave dude as he journeys through a world ruled by evil pigs.

Got all that?

If not, don’t worry. “Tomba” seems to be part of Sony’s efforts to appeal to younger players. It’s a cutesy world filled with juvenile sight gags. But I doubt that any but the most game-deprived tykes will find much in “Tomba” to cheer.

Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games every Monday in The Cutting Edge. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send e-mail to aaron.curtiss@latimes.com.

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Essentials

Dead or Alive

* Platform: Sony PlayStation

* Publisher: Tecmo

* Publisher: Interplay

* ESRB* rating: Teen

* Price: $39.99

* Bottom line: A little too much jiggling

Virtual Chess 64

* Platform: Nintendo 64

* Publisher: Titus