Dead or Alive 5: Director wants more cameos, 'Ryo from Shenmue would be ideal'

Dead or Alive 5 director Yosuke Hayashi would like more cameos in Dead or Alive 5 after launch, and revealed to VG247 that his ideal cameo would be Ryo from Shenmue. He also explained the relationship between Team Ninja and Sega in greater detail.

Hayashi said, "Actually not a lot of people may know this but the first Dead or Alive game that came out in arcades was actually made with the Virtua Fighter arcade engine. So that's how the first ever Dead or Alive project came about."

"We didn't aim to be where Virtua Fighter was, but because we used its engine as our base, we obviously had some kind of connection with Sega. So when we decided to make Dead or Alive 5 we went to see them and to say, 'Hey, we're making this game', and through conversation we asked if Sega could join us in this celebration of our comeback.

"Sega then said OK, and thanks to our connections in the past they thought it'd be fun, so why not do it? So we got the characters and Sega was very cooperatively actually, in letting us adjust them for our game. We were in very close contact with their development team."

"We got their guidance and feedback, we got them to check for everything we were doing with the characters. Because of that kind of close communication, we managed to pull off a fairly close system to the original Virtua Fighter characters."

When we asked if there were other dream cameos Hayashi would like to see in the game, he replied, "Speaking of Sega characters, I'd say the main character from Shenmue. When considering a cameo for a fighting game, you have to look at someone who can actually fight. After the release of Dead or Alive 5 we'd like to explore cameos further, but at the moment...it's a secret"

Dead or Alive 5 is out 25 September in Europe on Xbox 360 and PS3