Free Step Dodge

Congrats Kwiggle at winning your third TFC!

The Fall Classic seems to get our competitive community all wound up as we have come to expect a serious level of competition from this event, and it has delivered year after year with exciting gameplay, artistic flow and explosive matches. Starting off in the pools we see character diversity, great competition and sportsmanship, new players and great offline growth. Tomorrow the hype continues with Top 8 streaming via Funky P @1:30 EST.

Quick Thoughts: Shockwave's Pai was awesome! We rarely see the character used at offline events and we got to see some great tech from a veteran Pai player. @coldpieceaj made a great comeback against @shazzmatazzles; great change to Sarah and great matches. Jennings was the first player to use Mai at a tournament to my knowledge, and it...

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and in honor of this month I have decided that 20% of the price for the White & Pink Hoodies in the Free Step Dodge Shop will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation at the end of the month. That's about $12 for every White & Pink hoodie sold. There are two options currently available for hoodies: Zipped and Pull Over.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organization which has raised $569.4 million to support clinical and translational research at...

While this might be a rumor for now the history posted on Steamdb would suggest that Core Fighters is definitely coming to the PC platform. Now while PC play has been a bit controversial in some areas, it would appear that Team NINJA is still supporting Steam players, giving everyone a chance to play a fighting game for free (with option of paid DLC characters) that is actually worth your time.

This might not come as too surprising since Team NINJA has accrued over 7,000,000 downloads on systems, and the recent release of Mai has also brought players from past versions of DOA5 back in as well as curious King of Fighters fans.

If you haven't played DOA5 yet, and would like to try it out please keep coming to FSD for all the latest updates on Core Fighters for PC, and you can also join the...

Three years ago the community blew the damn roof off at TFC with some truly kick ass matches -- and I believe it was one of the first times in our offline history that we were very strongly viewed by other people from the FGC displaying not only talented players, but incredibly fluid and well animated gameplay played at its finest.

Now here we are in 2016; and another TFC is upon us. Our community is a lot bigger now than it ever has been, and we are continuing to see players like you evolve their tactics over the years. Remember that this TFC has free DOA5LR entry; so now is the time to show how far you have come along.

This will also be the very first tournament to host our new character Mai Shiranui...

For years now, community members have been unable to literally wear their Dead or Alive pride on their sleeves. We here at Free Step Dodge have deemed this unacceptable and, finally, have taken decisive action to remedy this problem! Worry no longer, friends, as the Free Step Dodge store has officially opened its digital doors for business!


Some folks got a preview of the content at the recent Summer Jam event in Philadelphia and may have heard some rumblings about designs along the way. As of this very moment, you can head over to the store and start placing orders. Shirts are made to order, so you are not ordering a product sitting on a shelf. You place the order, your shirt is made just for you, and it will then be shipped, so give yourself a comfortable window to get the item. Check the site for a more...

Mai has been officially released for play with Last Round and people have already begun to take her to the lab; figuring out her tech and mastering her combos. If you are unfamiliar with this iconic fighter, allow @DestructionBomb to give you a demonstration of perhaps one of the most beautiful move sets I have ever seen in a 3D Fighter via the combo and command training:

Another educational and recommended source is viewing the Twitch Channel of professional player @EMPEROR_COW. He says that the character is fast, and has viable range -- but like most every other character, Mai is not without flaws and weaknesses. Check his channel out if you want over five hours of Day 1 content.

FreeStepDodge has you covered on a...

Mai is probably the biggest character reveal we have seen since Marie Rose, and she is available now on Playstation Network, Steam and XBOX Live. She's available in two different SKUs, price differing depending on the amount of costumes you would like to see her in. With the patch you can also buy the new King of Fighters outfits for various characters.

What are your initial thoughts on Mai? Feel free to share all of your newly found tech/combos in her exclusive character forum. You can also share matches you've recorded and stream online using FSD as your primary source to expand your knowledge outside of your typical lab routine.

https://www.twitch.tv/primedirectivegaming

1. Kwiggle
2. Crazy Steady
3. Hajin

If you've missed any of the tournament this far you can check out all of the matches at primdirectivegaming's twitch channel. The charity show is still going now and results will be posted later after the event. You are getting a great viewing of tournament regulars: Crazy Steady, Shazzmatazzles, Hajin, Kwiggle (surprise!), Black Moon Rising and more -- so stay tuned with this West Coast Major staple.

Remember that Mai will be available to download on PSN and XBL 9.13.16 -- this is one of the most important days of the year, so be sure to mark it on you calendar if you haven't already. The always awesome and exciting Cali Crush tournament is happening this weekend and will be the LAST DOA event to not have Mai as a playable character... don't miss Kasumi's last tournament before she is brutally murdered by Mai off the tier list completely.

But there are plenty more reasons to not miss Cali Crush... Crazy Steady and Hajin will be getting into it in a FT10 -- we knew they were going to fight in some way so why not do it big? You can always feel the intensity when these players fight; expect a brutal set here.

The Cali Crush tournament has...

Opinion: Dead or Alive 5 has not only proven to be a long lasting offline tournament game, but it's also contributed to breaking a curse of bad cross-overs. Sure we have seen some good ones over the years, but largely it's a topic in games that is not in our control to the slightest as it's a big business decision to even entertain the idea in the first place so just getting the exact crossover you want for your game can be incredibly rare.

We have seen the lamest cross-overs you could ever hope for such as: Yoda, Darth Vader, Kratos... Hello Kitty and Sonic... Mario in a NBA game. These have little meaning to me, but DOA5 has Virtua Fighter guest characters. Virtua Fighter inspired Dead or Alive's existence so it can be seen as a truly beautiful thing that these games exist within another now. The Virtua Fighter characters are well done additions to do the DOA cast, not just pointless throw-ins that get...

Taking place in Dallas, TX this weekend, Absolute Battle played host to some of the finest players in the community. BBoyDragon made the trip down and some of Dallas' most well-known players were also in attendance. Surprising more than a few, Sweet Revenge appears to have located his controller and popped back up at a tournament for the first time in quite a while. MASTER was also in attendance, tossing Sweet Revenge into Losers after a close set. Sweet Revenge then battled back, taking the first set against MASTER in commanding fashion for the reset. The final set was much closer, with all signs pointing to MASTER taking it before an impressive rally brought SR the 'W'.

Check the stream archive below. The tournament runs from about the 12:00 mark to about 3:02 on the timeline.

http://www.twitch.tv/saltymayhem/v/86012150?t=12m32s

With the upcoming launch of a new addition to the Dead or Alive 5 Last Round roster, there is a lot of hype within the DoA community. In the spirit of keeping the hype train moving, we thought it would be a grand idea to let everyone know that the Battle Royal 2016 finale, NEC 17, now has its pre-registration page up and running. The tournament will take place in Philadelphia, PA at the Valley Forge Casino Resort from December 16-18, 2016. We know that most of our readers didn't even make it to the first sentence of this article, what with the article title sending them scrambling to the pre-reg page over at Big E's...

Congrats are in order to @XcaliburBladeZ for not only winning Summer Jam X; but also for winning yet another chapter in the 2016 Team NINJA Battle Royal. If you missed SJX live why not stream it right now via Team Sp00ky's Channel? The event starts 3h15m into the video link provided.

Top 8 started exactly how I wanted it: no Kasumi, no Phase 4 -- and no Christie. In the refreshing startup matchup we see @Jaegar and his seasoned Rig take on the mid-boss himself @Rikuto. I think the community needed to see a match-up like this because many don't get to see a Bayman perform to this calibur, and Jaegar is a player that's very good at maximizing his damage against heavy fighters.

This had to have been a very interesting Summer Jam experience for long-time player @Blackburry because not only did an unfortunate reset bury his momentum in a fight he was largely in control of, but before he even got...

Summer Jam 2016 Stream

Summer Jam is one our staple tournaments as it turned a lot of us to the possibility of DOA5 being taken seriously in the competitive offline scene... almost four years later we are still getting it done in DOA5. This tournament is part of Team NINJA's Battle Royal so expect to see the best possible matches from the community!

Thank you nycfurby for streaming this event for us, BigEGaming for being an awesome host the fourth year in a row -- and to Team NINJA for making this 2016 Battle Royal happen.

When a studio like Team NINJA makes a high quality game like Dead or Alive 5, it's natural to want more, but is it a little too soon to be expecting another game? Evidence would say yes, as some from the dev team have questioned if DOA6 would even come out and with Mai coming to the game in two months, and with about six months left of planned Battle Royal events why would it be announced or even hinted this year?

In the 90s, I primarily played video games on the Nintendo 64... a console that people point out is severly lacking in games, but to me that never really mattered much because of the quality of the games I was playing. I had a triple A game in every genre and I couldn't wait to play them again so it's hard for me to understand this new generation of gamers that see games as so disposable, because the way I see it DOA5's lifespan is as long as the community keeps playing it.

Hype can sometimes carry a lot of the market now, and if you observe the market you will see...

Dead or Alive Festival was a killer event that not only delivered one of the finest fighting tournaments the FGC has ever seen, but also revealed the addition of Mai (from Fatal Fury and KoF) to the Dead or Alive roster. I believe it was very exciting to any of the community skeptics who thought the reveal may only be a few costumes and a new stage.

In this excellent article written by Christian Bahn we get to hear more from the often-times quiet, Creative Director of Team NINJA, Tom Lee -- who has quite a bit to say not just about crossovers, but the community as well. The Virtua Fighter crossover was the blueprint of success, not only because the characters transitioned well into the DOA universe, but because it made sense. Now that...

Mai Shiranui from the legendary Fatal Fury and King of Fighters series is coming to Dead or Alive! Since her birthplace is in Japan it seems like Dead or Alive Festival 2016 is the perfect place to announce this intense crossover. She has her own style of ninjutsu and the look to fit in right at home with the DOA girls... and she's coming soon!

There will also be an Attack on Titan stage, tons more costumes (including some KoF) and even some VR announced for Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. Team NINJA is dipping into a lot of neat and interesting projects this year!


KoF Maximum Impact Video | KoF XIII Combo Video | Mai Shiranui Wiki

FULL SHOW

Show Highlights:

Interesting Photo Contest with multiple winners - Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 VR announcement - Dead or Alive Costume Lineup for Fairytale and other various anime - @EMPEROR_COW took over the cosplay contest

Teru Rock takes on Bayman - Mila is taken to new heights - Insane Phase 4 action by @BBoyDragon - XcaliburBladeZ brings back Alpha and goes warp crazy - Bladez wins DOA Festival 2016

Stay tuned for the replay with news to follow.

In just a few short days the DOA Festival will be streamed live via Tokyo, Japan. Team NINJA has just now recently added the event trailer to their Youtube channel, and this is probably the most exciting thing we have seen from Team NINJA all year long... if not since Last Round or Dead or Alive Xtreme 3's announcement last festival.

Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of DOA, the trailer highlights the past games and may even create a desire in your heart for a remastered DOA collection fully optimized for online play. Of course this is wishful thinking, but what could be in store for us DOA5 players? Hayashi hinted big things in store for DOA and DOA Festival seems like the perfect platform to inform the community on these things.

Regardless of what happens, we are getting an exciting event that will appeal to anyone remotely interested in Dead or Alive. Keep coming to FreeStepDodge this...

DOA Festival was an amazing event last year not just because of the incredible offline tournament -- but because it was an event that had serious appeal to every last person remotely interested in Dead or Alive. This year Team NINJA is doing it again with the same mindset they had in 2015.

Team NINJA announced Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 at the event last year; a game that people had waited nearly ten years to play. With an announcement like that last year, do you think we could see another special DOA related announcement next month? My opinion is, yes... we will see something new; especially since Hayashi has indicated big news for DOA more recently.

The electric Xcalibur Blades, the frantic and visceral style of @BBoyDragon and the risky but graceful Air Gear will all be representing North...

Livestream Pools: https://www.twitch.tv/roftv
Livestream Top 8: https://www.twitch.tv/gaminglive_event

A quick rehash from the event page posted by @Gehaktbal for all those streaming this very early morning... or night I guess:

June 11th:
12pm - 2pm : Pool 1 + Pool 2
2pm - 4pm: Pool 3 + Pool 4
4pm - 5pm: ---Break---
5pm - 7pm: Top 16 to Top 8
7pm - 8:30pm: Top 8
(DOA all day)

Be sure to tune into this tournament -- there are always quite a few memorable matches at this event, and to my knowledge Gehaktbal has won it nearly every year, but lost maybe just once against Sweet Revenge when he was on his big win streak in the DOA5U days. These players are ready for blood I think -- hoping to see something new and refreshing myself. RoF sounds like the place.