Dead or Alive 3 now has two native PC recompilations, and Android and Switch ports built on one of them

Two separate projects turned Tecmo's 2001 Xbox fighter into native PC code this month, and one of them already has an Android alpha and a Switch port in progress.

AI-drafted from 6 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Dead or Alive 3, Tecmo's 2001 fighting game for the original Xbox, has been rebuilt as native code twice in October, by two projects working separately. Neither is an emulator. Both lift the Xbox executable into C with a static recompiler and link it against code that stands in for the console's kernel, graphics and sound.

Two ways onto the PC

doa3-recomp, by parkerallan, put out its v1.0.1 release on 5 October and had reached v1.0.6 by 19 October. Its README says all game modes are fully playable and lists an online mode for single and tag matches, a 60 fps cap, 4:3 or 16:9, and internal resolution up to 1440p. It credits the xboxrecomp toolkit by Ned Heller (sp00nz) and the burnout3 project, described as the first static recompilation of a retail original Xbox game, and says Cxbx-Reloaded was used as a debugging reference.

doa3-re, by NoRain211, reuses the runtime from the same author's Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball port. Its first public alpha came out on 9 October for Windows, with Direct3D 11 graphics, XAudio2 sound including the Xbox's HRTF, and hand-written stage collision. The 0.2 alpha a day later added the game's own lighting, which the notes say about 95% of its 3D draws depend on, and saves that survive a crash. The README now lists native macOS and Linux builds as well. It ships no game files and no prebuilt runner: a script builds the game from your own USA disc, which takes 10 to 20 minutes the first time. The release notes say the project uses LLMs and AI coding agents extensively, and that passing tests does not prove the game behaves exactly as it did on the Xbox.

Android and Switch

Two ports have already been built on doa3-re. Wannamingo's Android port reached 0.1.0-alpha4 on 12 October. It runs the game's x86 code recompiled for ARM64, draws with OpenGL ES 3, reads a USA ISO directly without unpacking it, and offers 1x, 2x and 3x internal resolution. Its author says booting, menus and fights were checked on an RG477M handheld, but a full playthrough, every character and every stage have not been.

DOA3 NX, by Toniisound, was announced on 23 October as a work in progress for Switch consoles running homebrew. In the GBAtemp post, the author says the whole game runs in the Eden emulator at 60 fps in menus and lighter scenes, with fights dropping to about 30 fps, and that work on real hardware is still under way. The game, an OpenGL renderer and the audio mixer each get a CPU core. No .nro is offered, because it would contain the game's own code, so users build it from their own copy, and the build checks the disc's default.xbe against the one supported USA version.

Sources

Image: Wannamingo

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