Xbox 360 Fanboy

With Tecmo's attempts at getting a gag order failing and bad blood still staining the Tecmo name, Tomonobu Itagaki is steadfast in following through with the lawsuit against his former boss with the introduction of new evidence and an increase in his damages claim.

Recently, Itagaki submitted all kinds of documents and recordings as evidence to help his case against Tecmo, where he claims they owe him all kinds of cash. The documents include signed contracts and a transcript of a recording between Itagaki and Tecmo president Yoshimi Yasuda where they discussed and agreed on contract terms. Also, with the new evidence coming to light, Itagaki has increased his lawsuit's damages from $1.3 million USD to $1.5 million USD. Itagaki is raging mad. Don't mess with a raging mad Itagaki.

Fighting games used to be king. Once upon a time, back in the 90s, arcades (remember those?) were full of fighting games of all kinds. You could fight with and against just about anything you pleased: dinosaurs, robots, time travelers, ninjas, werewolves, you name it. With so many games from which to choose, rivalries were formed. After the Street Fighter VS. Mortal Kombat era rose the Virtua Fighter VS. Tekken era. When the Dead or Alive series arrived, Virtua Fighter's influence was unmistakable (the original DOA ran on the VF2 arcade board after all). The game's had identical control schemes (as long as you disregard VF3's unfortunate dodge button), similar combos and even shared many fighting styles. So, which one is better?

GameTrailers is letting the gaming public decide by pitting Virtua Fighter 5 against Dead or Alive 4. It's simple, watch a video (also in HD) then vote for your favorite game in several categories. Cast your vote on the best graphics, gameplay, characters, and more. After you vote, see how your choices reflect the general public.

Currently, it's a pretty close race, with DOA4 winning people over with its stages and modes, while VF5 wins in the areas of graphics and gameplay. Which do you prefer?

Dead or Alive 4 fans will be pleased to know that the latest Xbox.com Play and Win giveaway merges your love for DOA and ice skating. Starting March 23rd Will Ferrell's latest movie Blades of Glory is sponsoring a Xbox Live DOA 4 team giveaway. All you have to do is signup yourself and a friend starting March 23rd and play DOA 4 through March 25th. Every day you and your friend play DOA 4's multiplayer you'll receive an entry into the giveaway. Prizes include a snazzy Blades of Glory warm-up jacket, a limited edition box of flakies cereal, and Microsoft Points. Hurry already and round up a DOA buddy to win some frosted cereal!

If you're like us, you may have been too busy actually playing games this weekend to notice that the TGS content is still rolling in. So, a quick summary of what's been released yesterday and today is in order. Here you go:

TGS Showfloor video 1
TGS Showfloor video Day 2 (Japan)
Game Creator Interview (Japan)
Xbox Live The Party #5 (Japan)
Xbox Live The Party #6 (Japan)
Xbox Live The Party #7 (Japan)
TGS Showfloor video 2
TGS Showfloor video Day 3 (Japan)
Gamers' Interview (Japan)
Xbox Live The Party #8 (Japan)
Xbox Live The Party #9 (Japan)
Xbox Live The Party #10 (Japan)
Vampire's Rain Trailer (Japan -- AKA Rain in the west)
Forza 2 Customization Trailer
Forza 2 Theme (not free)
Virtua Tennis 3 Trailer
NBA Live 07 Trailer
NHL 2K7 Trailer

As we said, we've been too busy rocking DOA4 online with our blogging buddies (or Championship Poker in Ken's case) to check out most of this content. Has anybody out there checked out the Vampire's Rain trailer? Is it different from the one released during E3? Leave us some comments and tell us what's hot and what's not.

[Via Major Nelson]

360 at the Tokyo Game Show:
Eternal Sonata gameplay/combat video
Metal Slug blasts its way onto XBLA
Lost Planet and Viva Piñata video
Microsoft TGS briefing video now available
DOAX2 video makes us feel naughty

Xboxygen has scored some scans of DOAX2 from the latest Famitsu. To be honest, some of these pictures are downright shameful. But, what should we expect from a man who designs his games drunk? Take a look at the upper left corner of the first scan for a little scissor icon. Digital pin-ups? Just for a change of pace, the second scan features actual volleyball and jet skis.

Anyone care to translate, or are the pictures universal?

[Thanks, gaetge]

This one ranks right up there with Dead or Alive 4's "Five Straight Losses" achievement (worth zero points, natch). Gastronaut, the studio behind the upcoming XBLA game, Small Arms, have created the first viral achievement. Four of Gastronaut's employees will start being the only ones with the achievement. Anybody who plays against one of these four will get the achievement. In turn, anybody who plays against those people will get the achievement and so on and so forth until the whole world is...er...infected with success. Pretty neat idea if you ask me. Which I'm pretty sure you did.

If you're not familiar with Small Arms, it looks an awful lot like Smash Brothers for the Gamecube, except with guns. Lets hope it's at least half as fun.

[Via 1UP]

Kikizo recently sat down with the real Rockstar of developers, Tomonobu Itagaki. The creator of Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden, and the upcoming DOA Xtreme 2 shares some interesting...er...theories about game development. First and foremost, game development is all about getting drunk. Discussing the stage designs in DOA4 and Xtreme 2, Itagaki had this to say:

"So you know, all those attractive environments in DOA4, we usually come up with the ideas for that and talk about it while we are drinking. Basically, if we have twenty stages, nearly half of them will be based on theory from when we are still sober, and the other half we just try to come up with crazy ideas, while intoxicated. With the fighting title, maybe forty per cent of the stages were based on being loose and fun, but with DOAX2, ninety per cent is loose and fun!"

Wow. Frighteningly similar to blogging...

For what it's worth, Itagaki says that he's had his best ideas while drinking whiskey. Sounds good to me. Before you go inebriating yourselves, just remember: friends don't let friends drink and develop. Hit the read link for the whole interview.

[Via Eurogamer]

Xboxic got some interesting faceplates today from an unidentified source. These Dead or Alive faceplates are almost definitely unofficial but they certainly are, um, eye catching. There are also Scarface and Blue Dragon faceplates in there for some reason.

As far as I know, these aren't available at retail. Of course, there's nothing to stop you from making them yourself.

Anybody have any other special faceplate designs they'd like to share with the rest of the class?

Hit the read link to see more (technically safe for work, but still pretty risqué).

Following on the heels of yesterday's update that was supposed to prepare your console for updates, comes the first update to take advantage of that update. What are we talking about again?

There is a mandatory auto-update available for Dead or Alive 4. Though it's not clear what is being fixed, although the leaderboards have been reset (sorry high scorers). The most notable problem with the game has been the lag experienced in online play. Any DoA'ers notice reduced lag in Live play?

If the impending release of Dead or Alive 4 hasn't got you frothing at the mouth, then how about some videos to go with the news snippets trickling on to the web?

As usual, Xboxyde has come up trumps with these videos, covering the game's intro and (naturally) some fighting. It's looking good, although eagle-eyed DoA fans are already marking the similarities between previous versions and the next-gen iteration.