Dead Or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball Rating:  Publisher: (Tecmo)
What kind of world are we living in? In this instance, the wonderful and frightening world of Japanese videogames. Thus far, the American-built Xbox has largely stiffed in the land of the rising sun, but the release of this quirky title saw a frenzy on a par with the day Godzilla ate a knicker-vending machine.
Featuring seven of the female characters from classy beat-'em-up, Dead Or Alive, plus one new girl, the pneumatic octet are marooned on a desert island with nothing but an industrial-sized tub of suntan lotion and an array of brightly-coloured bikinis. Taking control of one of the girls, volleyball is on the agenda - as the title suggests - but before you can begin you will have to impress a potential partner by buying her gifts. Get it right and she'll agree to play with you; buy her something unsuitable and there'll be tears before bedtime, but only after you've visited a casino in the hope of winning some extra funds.
The volleyball itself is competently executed, with a simple control system and graphical detail that sees the girls bouncing in all the right places. The rest of the game is frankly bewildering, and it will inevitably be viewed as either an oddball classic or too weird to warrant serious attention. There's no denying the quality though, and it's definitely something of a breath of fresh air. A difficult game to explain, even more so if you're ever caught playing it by yourself.
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