Recent Obsessions Part 4
Sunday March 30, 2025
It’s time for another one. These posts are some of my favorites to write.
Dead or Alive (still)
I already gushed about how much I like Dead or Alive, but that post was very surface level. I’m not being hard on myself, that’s just how it is when you first pick up a game. My knowledge of the game 3 months later is still pretty surface level, but at least now I understand how the stun system works. I’ll try to explain it. Maybe it’ll make you want to try Dead or Alive (5, specifically).
Critical Stun
After some hits, your opponent gets stunned, as indicated by the white “Critical Stun” text under their health bar. Continuing to hit them without knocking them down will make the “Critical Stun” text turn red. Each character has specific moves that can then cause a “Critical Burst”, indicated by the misty, screen shaking explosion released on impact.
This, of course, allows for sweet combos.
Figuring this cycle out has made the game click a little bit more, or at least that’s what I thought before playing online. I’ll get into that later.
The other “thing” about (red) critical stun is that you can land a free super, assuming you’re at low health. Low health (your life bar flashing red) is what turns your “Power Blow” into a cinematic super move. Lots of dumb ass terms that all sound the same, I know.
Characters have different moves that initiate a Critical Burst, as well as different inputs for the Power Blow. Sometimes I just try random shit with a character I don’t know, and it works. ⬅️ P+K seems like a pretty common Power Blow input.
Lisa
I really only know Lisa’s moves. Lisa is my new favorite character, by the way. Sorry, Tina. If I ever decide to learn tag combos, my team will be Lisa and Tina. Anyway, Lisa is fucking awesome. I love how she flips and rolls around all over the place, and her back-turned shenanigans are fun to execute and look at. I’ve tried a bunch more combo trials for various other characters, but nobody else’s “thing” is as fun as Lisa’s. I’m at the point where I can just try shit. Like, “after X, try doing Y” and a lot of times, it works. Maybe it’s not very optimal, but I feel comfortable that my fingers are doing to do what my brain wants to do. I think that’s a pretty big hurdle when learning any game.
DOA (for girls)
I still play this game with my girlfriend. I mentioned last time that I can’t believe she even likes this game, and considering that she’s the one asking me to play most of the time, I think she truly does like it. There is, uh, a gap in skill, but that is partially solved by picking random characters and random stages. Turn your volume down before watching the video below.
She scoffs at the randomly selected skimpy outfits for the girls, but she almost exclusively plays as male characters, and it’s not like the men of DOA are ugly. I ain’t dumb. She still jiggles the boobs around on the victory screen sometimes, so she can’t be too annoyed. Did you know you could do that? I did not know that when writing my last post about DOA. Nyotengu’s boobs are never jiggled. She hates Nyotengu.
Recently we’ve been doing tag matches as a team against two CPUs. It’s training mode for me, and she doesn’t have to feel the sting of losses. I mostly just try to set her up for sweet combos.
We briefly tried out DOA 6, but quickly decided that 5 is better. Two new characters? I can’t do my cool stun combos? Get that shit outta here.
I don’t actually know how to play yet
As expected, the people who still play this game online are animals, so no amount of my combo-trial-ass-combos make a dent in the carousel of monsters I am matched up against. What surprised me was the lack of critical bursts and supers. At first, I thought it was just a guy turning his brain off while fighting me, but even when spectating two good (from my perspective) players, it seemed like a lot of nasty juggles and mix-ups. I’ll figure it out.
I should stop telling people I like this game
I forget about the particularly wild horny shit sometimes. You gotta have some severe brain worms to not be instantly put off by the “you lose” screen. Doesn’t matter which character. It makes me think about the people in real life who hear me say “Dead or Alive is fuckin’ sick” all the time. Anyway, onto the music.
Music 2
I was intrigued by this album cover while scrolling through the electronic section of Bandcamp, so I clicked play. I was not expecting to get my dick blown off my Megablast.
Not even halfway through the song and knew I was going to be listening to this shit on repeat for at least a week. The rest of the album didn’t hit me as hard, but I have grown to really like the other tracks as well. Skinner and Pipeland in particular.
SHIMMER
This is the kind of electronic music I would download to my jailbroken iPod touch when I was 12. God. Crazy that you had to jailbreak an iPod to download YouTube videos. I couldn’t believe there were suckers out there not jailbreaking their iPod. The horrors that my underdeveloped brain witnessed on that 3.5 inch iPod touch (2nd gen) screen definitely fucked my life up. Downloading Springboard tweaks from Cydia until it crashed was fun, though.
Anyway, the first and seventh tracks are my favorite. I like them all except for the last one, which for whatever reason is unlistenable to me. Maybe I’m just being a hypocritical weeb.
What else I’ve been up to
In my two year post I said I was going to take a little break. I know one month isn’t much of a break, but it was enough for me to realize that posting here isn’t what became overwhelming. I did try making another site for hosting art, but of course, the solution was not more internet. It just gave me more comments sections to check, pages to tweak, an output I felt like I should maintain, etc. Being a retard that only draws poorly constructed anime girls with huge boobs attracts a specific crowd. Being in that crowd felt like shit. The site is gone, and I won’t be drawing Naomi for a while. If you couldn’t tell based on the iPod comment I made earlier, I’ve recently been reflecting on the impact of all the pixelated garbage I’ve consumed over the years. I have finally been working on arcade related stickers that are unrelated to this site and don’t feature Naomi on them. I have enough of those. Here is one design that just arrived:
Check out the shop if you’re interested. Working on other stickers feels great. Anime girls are exhausting. The look I’m going for is “unofficial, but official looking”, so if you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments. I’ll resume the Naomi drawings eventually, maybe. I don’t know. All that talk about pixelated garbage on a screen, but I draw the line at art, not fuckin’ Dead or Alive?
I went to a Third Strike tournament. I did fine. The late night, post tournament 4v4 was the best part of the event. I started Team Garage off stronger than I expected, with Therapist cleaning up.
I recently acquired a free NES. It came with a light gun, Duck Hunt, and some other less desirable games, but I couldn’t get it to boot anything. I already had an NES sitting in my basement, and with enough cleaning, I was able to start Duck Hunt on that one. I would still like to get the other one working, since it would make the original owner happy, but I’m not sure what the solution is. I tried boiling the 72 pin connector, but that only made my kitchen smell like plastic.
Maybe I just need more rubbing alcohol and more patience.
Thanks for reading.