Dead or Alive 2 Has Two Versions That Matter, and a $40 Handheld Can Only Run One of Them

Dead or Alive 2 has an unusually messy paper trail for a game that most people remember as a single disc. It started on Sega's NAOMI arcade board in October 1999, reached the Dreamcast on 29 February 2000 as a port of the arcade Millennium revision, shipped on the PlayStation 2 in Japan a month after that in a state its own director described as unfinished, and was only released properly in October 2000 as Dead or Alive 2 Hardcore.

That history is not trivia if you intend to play it now, because the versions are not the same game and they do not ask the same thing of your hardware. On the Dreamcast side the game is a port of an arcade board that shared the console's own architecture. On the PS2 side the last version is a 60-frame-per-second rebuild with eight more stages than the Dreamcast update ever got.

So we ran the question through the catalogue instead of the marketing copy. Of 593 handhelds we track, 445 carry an emulation grade for both the Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2. 247 of those 445 clear a B or better for the Dreamcast library. For the PS2 library the figure is 134. The cheapest device with a B-or-better Dreamcast grade is a $40 console. The cheapest with a B-or-better PS2 grade is $114. The version you want decides which of those brackets you are shopping in.

Four releases and two different games

Here is what actually shipped, with the dates as recorded by the game's own release history.

The Japanese PS2 version got a further revision on 14 December 2000 as Hard*Core, with new cutscenes, a turbo option and a second opening sequence. The Xbox remake that followed years later is a different game again and has nothing to do with this comparison.

Why the Dreamcast port was the easy one

The NAOMI arcade board and the Dreamcast are close relatives: the arcade hardware was built around the same architecture as Sega's console. That shared architecture is why the Dreamcast version could be finished in February 2000, on a schedule tied to Tecmo's March 2000 stock-market listing — the porting work was closer to repackaging an arcade game than to rebuilding one. Dead or Alive 2 ended up being the only game Tecmo ever published on the Dreamcast.

What the port kept was the arcade Millennium revision intact: the same stages, the same character set, the same speed. What it added was home furniture — Versus, Sparring and a Team Battle mode — and what it changed was the hold system, simplified from the arcade version. It shipped with no unlockables at all, which for a 2000 console fighter was unusual.

The Japanese Limited Edition that landed in September 2000 is the version most people outside Japan have never seen. It added online play, a Watch Mode, a user profile system and a Gallery, made Bankotsubo and Bayman unlockable outside Story Mode, and rebuilt two stages from the first Dead or Alive — Burai Zenin and L's Castle — instead of taking the stages the PS2 version had introduced.

The PS2 version that shipped before it was done

The PlayStation 2 release is a case study in launch-window pressure. It arrived on 30 March 2000 as a Japanese launch title, built in roughly two months. It brought three new stages — Crimson, Koku An and Prairie — and new unlockable costumes, and it rendered the game with fields rather than frames, which is why the PS2 version looks noticeably more jagged than the Dreamcast one despite running on newer hardware. It was also unstable: the Versus mode was known to lock up.

Tomonobu Itagaki, who directed the game, has spoken publicly about that release for years, including a 2012 DICE talk reported at the time, in which he described being manoeuvred into shipping a build he did not consider finished. The home version that he did consider finished arrived seven months later.

Hardcore is the game the director wanted

Dead or Alive 2 Hardcore was built from the second Japanese Dreamcast update rather than the launch PS2 code, and it is the version to play if you want the complete game. The frame rate now held at a full 60 frames per second including cutscenes — on the Dreamcast, gameplay ran at 60 and the cutscenes dropped to 30. It added eight more stages than the Dreamcast update carried, more outfits, an Items Collection for collectors, a CG gallery, a faster overall game speed and the series' first English voice track alongside the Japanese one.

That is the version with the reputation. It is also, from a hardware point of view, the expensive one.

The hardware split, measured on 445 handhelds

Our catalogue grades every handheld per system, on a scale from A down to F, and the grade is a buying signal rather than a promise: A means the system should feel easy, B means many games are playable but expect emulator choices, settings work or the odd frameskip, C means tinkerers only. The full scale is explained in our guide to reading emulation grades.

Of 593 tracked devices, 445 carry a grade for both of these systems. Split by grade band:

Two numbers carry the story. The Dreamcast library is playable at B or better on 55 percent of everything we track; the PS2 library on 30 percent. And the F column is the starkest: 103 handhelds cannot reasonably run Dreamcast software at all, while 235 cannot run PS2 software — more than half the graded catalogue.

This is also why the two libraries are bought for different emulators. The Dreamcast side of the index is bought for Flycast and Redream headroom, which is exactly what our Dreamcast emulation guide ranks on. The PS2 side is bought for AetherSX2 headroom, and as our PS2 emulation guide puts it, full-speed PS2 wants Snapdragon-class silicon — a much narrower class of device.

The 37 handhelds that only run the Dreamcast version

Thirty-seven devices in the catalogue carry a B-or-better Dreamcast grade and an F for the PlayStation 2. Another 113 play the Dreamcast library at B or better and the PS2 library at C or worse. That is 150 handhelds where the version question is not a preference. On those machines, the Dreamcast disc is the only Dead or Alive 2 that exists.

The examples sit exactly where you would expect them to:

The KONKR Pocket Block is the one worth staring at. It carries an A for Dreamcast and an A for the Game Boy, NES and SNES libraries, and it costs less than $80. It cannot be sold to you as a PS2 machine, and nothing about its price suggests it should be.

What to buy for each version

If the Dreamcast version is the one you want — and for a fighting game whose arcade revision is intact, it is a defensible choice — the floor is remarkably low. The R39S is $40 with a B grade, which means "mostly playable" rather than "perfect". The first A-grade Dreamcast device in the index is the Pocket Air Mini at $70, followed by the KONKR Pocket Block at $79.

If you want both versions on one device, the entry point is the Retroid Pocket Classic at $114: an A for Dreamcast and a B for PS2 in the same shell, which makes it the cheapest device in the catalogue that clears the B bar on both sides. The RG406V at $155 is the next step up, an A and a B with a 4:3 vertical panel.

If Hardcore is the target and you want it at A, the PS2 A list starts at $200 with the RG477V — Anbernic's own store listed it at $259.99 when we last checked, above the catalogue figure. The Retroid Pocket 5 at $199 carries an A for Dreamcast and an A− for PS2; the Retroid Pocket 6 at $209 and the Odin 3 at $299 both carry A on both.

That is a fivefold jump from the Dreamcast floor to the PS2 ceiling for the same 2000 fighting game. Whether the extra money is worth it depends entirely on which version you intend to play, and that is a question the box art never answered.

What a grade does and does not say

Three limits are worth stating plainly, because a table of 445 rows invites more confidence than it has earned.

The grade is per system, not per game. Nobody here has benchmarked this disc on 445 devices. A B grade says the Dreamcast library usually runs with some settings work on that handheld; it does not promise this particular game at full speed, and a demanding title can sit below its system's grading.

The prices are maker's store prices for the entry configuration. Most of those stores ship from outside the European Union, so import VAT, duty and battery or chemical fees are charged on delivery and can add a fifth or more. Where a figure is an early-bird or pre-order tier, it is a launch price rather than today's price — the price basis behind every number here is published rather than folded into a footnote.

The two releases have two catalogue entries. The Dreamcast-era game lives at Dead or Alive 2, the PS2-era one at Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore. Both are graded against the handhelds that can run them, and the difference between the two lists is the whole point of this article.

Sources

• Wikipedia — "Dead or Alive 2", release dates, the Millennium and Limited Edition revisions, the field-versus-frame rendering difference and the Hardcore feature set: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia — "Sega NAOMI", the arcade board whose architecture the Dreamcast shares: en.wikipedia.org
• Wired — "Itagaki: Tecmo Tricked Me Into Releasing Dead or Alive 2" (9 February 2012): wired.com
• GamesRadar+ — "The 25 best Dreamcast games of all time", on the separate engines the Dreamcast version used for fights and cutscenes: gamesradar.com
• Lost In Consoles — the graded catalogue this piece is derived from, downloadable as CSV: handheld capability index and dataset.csv
• Lost In Consoles — the grade scale used for every number above: how to read emulation grades
• Lost In Consoles — the emulator headroom behind the two library grades: best handhelds for Dreamcast emulation and best handhelds for PS2 emulation
• Lost In Consoles — the price basis for every dollar figure here: price index