Even if you never touched a Dead or Alive game, if you were a straight or bi male during the 1990s or early 2000s, you almost certainly knew the franchise existed, largely because of its roster of attractive and generously “proportioned” female fighters. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball pushed that element even further by essentially removing the male cast, abandoning the fighting game format entirely, and placing all of these characters in extremely small bikinis. I got an Xbox somewhere around 2005 or 2006 and made a point of getting my own copy, given that I was single at the time and very lonely.
The one male character from the Dead or Alive series who makes any appearance is Zack, though his role is largely confined to the story setup. According to the game’s internal logic, he won Dead or Alive 3 on Xbox, collected his prize money, and used it to purchase a private island. He then sent invitations to all the women he had been fighting against in some transparently flimsy attempt to lure them to his island, and apparently every single one of them went along with it.
By the time Dead or Alive 3 had landed on Xbox, the series had assembled a substantial lineup of gorgeous female fighters. Whether you were drawn to Kasumi, her sister Ayane, the Chinese fighter Lei Fang, the French beauty Helena, or any number of others, the selection was not exactly limited. From what I recall, you had fairly broad freedom to switch between characters throughout the game.
As for the volleyball itself, it is honestly not very good. I played through a lot of matches, but in hindsight I think the main incentive was that winning earned you something within the game’s progression system. But staring at four ladies wearing floss for bikini bottoms didn’t hurt either.
Looking back, I suspect most players were spending the majority of their time watching the characters around the pool rather than actually competing in anything, which is a little absurd in retrospect because there was almost nothing to do in that space. The women could walk around, stretch out in a lounge chair, or float in the pool. It was essentially a very elaborate bikini showcase, and the point was clearly to give you ample opportunity to admire whatever swimwear you had managed to unlock for the virtual babes.
The in-game casino was one of the most genuinely enjoyable parts of the package. My memory is hazy after more than twenty years, but I believe the currency you earned there was what you used to purchase additional swimwear. The casino offered a solid range of classic casino games, and at the time there were not many good options for playing that kind of thing in a home setting. Everything was also decorated with images of the female characters, which is mildly absurd when you consider that all of these women should perhaps have been more alarmed that Zack had built an entire gambling establishment around their likenesses.
I also remember that the April following the game’s release, Electronic Gaming Monthly ran an April Fools’ piece in their magazine claiming there was a cheat code that would remove the bikinis and let the characters walk around in nothing at all. The number of furious teenage boys who discovered they had been pranked was presumably and hilariously very large. Anyway the franchise did not end there. The Xbox 360 received a substantially upgraded sequel, and the PSP got its own version of that as well. There was apparently a third entry in the series that never made it out of Asia in any meaningful way, which seems like an odd business decision. With Tomonobu Itagaki having passed away, whether Tecmo has any intention of reviving this particular spin-off is anybody’s guess.