Tecmo and Xbox Live announced today their exciting plan to host a worldwide Dead or Alive Ultimate (DOAU) online fighting tournament starting this month. The U.S. and Canadian neck of the tournament is slated to begin Monday, February 21, 2005 with round one of the tournament. The U.S. and Canadian tournament, entitled "The DOAU Mystery Gamer Competition," allows DOAU fighting fans from both countries a chance of a lifetime to fight against one of the creators of the game from Tecmo's highly esteemed Team Ninja development group. For one month, participants will be able to show off their fighting skills and prove their worth by logging into designated DOAU Mystery Gamer sessions through Xbox Live. Once there, they will receive only one chance to play and beat the Mystery Gamer in order to qualify for round two of the tournament. Designated dates and times for the DOAU Mystery Gamer sessions will be listed on the official Xbox website at www.xbox.com later this week. Other regions will follow suit with their own versions for the first round of competition; details on other region's tournaments will be announced in the upcoming weeks from Microsoft.

"The ultimate online fighter will be used as the centerpiece for the ultimate worldwide online tournament," John Inada, Tecmo's General Manager, said. "The game was designed to host tournaments of this sizeable nature and we plan to take full advantage of DOAU's technologically advanced online capabilities and Xbox Live's extraordinary online service to plan and execute this worldwide online tournament."

The latest installment in the highly popular Dead or Alive fighting series, Dead or Alive Ultimate, which shipped last November only on the Xbox video game system from Microsoft, received high critical acclaim for its revolutionary online "Virtual Arcade" mode, a throwback to the old arcade days, this unique online mode allows players to watch other players fight while they await their turn to play. Tecmo and Xbox Live hope that participants in the Mystery Gamer sessions will not only play in the online sessions but will take part in this spectator mode to watch and cheer on others during round one.

Contestants who beat the Mystery Gamer will move on to round two of the tournament where they will have a chance to fight against each other through Xbox Live in a fast and furious face-off using a random bracket format to decide the best of the best from U.S. and Canada. The top two winners from this round, along with the 6 other regional winners from around the world, will win a "Chance in a Lifetime" prize package to the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California.

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