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DOA Volleyball nee Peepshow

Tecmo reveals the origins of this most voyeuristic of titles

Dark blue icons of video game controllers on a light blue background
Image credit: Eurogamer

When it was revealed at E3, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball quickened the pulses of countless journalists sick of staring into the abyss of tedious sequels and revamps, and when the first videos of the game filtered onto the web, it gave one-handed surfers a new reason to consider an Xbox purchase.

Believe it or not, Tecmo has now owned up to the fact that, yes, the 'game' element was effectively bolted on to a female character showcase. Producer Tomonobu Itagaki told Japanese gaming site Dengeki Online that the game was originally to be called "DOA Digital Venus 2002", and marketed as a program to simply "move around the attractive CG characters in real time".

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, Itagaki-san discovered that simple voyeurism is actually quite boring (although Big Brother fans might contest that), commenting that "just being able to move them around would be no fun". And thus, the move to a volleyball simulation was made. Tecmo was "also thinking of making it into a swimming game, but canned the idea," instead choosing to add the game to an already impressive roster of forthcoming volleyball titles.

"I gave the green light since we had confidence it would be full of exhilaration," Itagaki-san finished. Well, that's one way of putting it…

Source - Madman's Cafe

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