Dead or Alive is a media franchise centered on a series of fighting games developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo. It is primarily composed of fast-paced fighting games that began with the original Dead or Alive in 1996. The series received universal acclaim with the sequels Dead or Alive 2 in 1999 and Dead or Alive 3 in 2001, which are both considered landmark titles in the fighting genre and gaming. Dead or Alive is the creation of Tomonobu Itagaki, who developed the first four installments but has since left the company and is no longer working on the series, which continues without him.
Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. was an American-Canadian company that provided interactive entertainment products marketed under the Mad Catz, GameShark and TRITTON brands. Mad Catz also distributed video game products for third-party partners. Following a 2017 bankruptcy, Mad Catz Global Limited acquired the trademarks.
Emil Pathric William Christensen, also known as HeatoN, is a Swedish esports manager and former professional Counter-Strike player, who played as captain of the gaming team Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP). HeatoN was the manager of NiP up until October 2018 when he decided to part ways with the organisation to focus on his own brand. He is widely considered one of the best Counter-Strike players of all time.
Dead or Alive 4 is a 2005 fighting game developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo for the Xbox 360. It is the fourth main entry in the Dead or Alive fighting series.
Katherine Gunn, also known by her online alias Mystik, is an American esports player and cosplayer. She won the second season of WCG Ultimate Gamer in 2010 and also competed in the Championship Gaming Series.
The Indiana Mad Ants are an American professional basketball team of the NBA G League based in Noblesville, Indiana, and are affiliated with the Indiana Pacers. The team plays their home games at Noblesville Event Center. From 2007–2023, the team played in Fort Wayne's Allen County War Memorial Coliseum and was known as the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. From 2023–2024, the team played in Indianapolis' Gainbridge Fieldhouse and was known as the Indiana Mad Ants.
The Championship Gaming Series (CGS) was a professional esports league based in the United States, that operated from 2007 to 2008. It was a global league that featured teams representing cities from around the world. The CGS aimed to bring a traditional sports league format to competitive gaming, with teams, franchises, and a regular season leading to playoffs and a championship. The CGS was preceded by the 2006 Championship Gaming Invitational, a television pilot featuring several future CGS players. The league was founded in 2007 and was owned and operated by DirecTV in association with British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) and STAR TV. Games played in the CGS included titles such as Counter-Strike: Source, FIFA, Dead or Alive 4, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Forza Motorsport 2. The league had a television broadcast deal, and matches were aired on various networks. Despite initial hype and investment, the CGS faced financial challenges and eventually ceased operations in 2008.
The Region 1 2007 CGS Draft was held on June 12, 2007, at The Playboy Mansion in Bel Air, California.
Rock Band is a series of rhythm games first released in 2007 and developed by Harmonix. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero series, the main Rock Band games has players use game controllers modeled after musical instruments and microphones to perform the lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, drums and vocal parts of numerous licensed songs across a wide range of genres though mostly focusing on rock music by matching scrolling musical notes patterns shown on screen. Certain games support the use of "Pro" instruments that require special controllers that more closely mimic the playing of real instruments, providing a higher challenge to players. Players score points for hitting notes successfully, but may fail a song if they miss too many notes. The series has featured numerous game modes, and supports both local and online multiplayer modes where up to four players in most modes can perform together.
In 2008, the Championship Gaming Series began its second season as a worldwide sports league for professional video gamers. A total of 18 teams representing cities in seven countries played in the league. The games supported included Counter-Strike: Source, Dead or Alive 4, FIFA 08, and Forza Motorsport 2.
Daigo Umehara is a Japanese esports player and author who competes competitively at fighting video games. He specializes in 2D arcade fighting games, mainly those released by Capcom. Known as "Daigo" or "The Beast" in the West and "Umehara" or "Ume" in Japan, Daigo is one of the world's most famous Street Fighter players and is often considered its greatest. His longevity is seen as an incredibly rare thing in the world of competitive video games. He currently holds a world record of "the most successful player in major tournaments of Street Fighter" in the Guinness World Records and is a six time Evo Championship Series winner.
JaX Money Crew (JMC) was an American professional esports team that had players competing in Counter-Strike 1.6 and FIFA 07. They competed under the name Dallas Venom as a franchise of the DirecTV Championship Gaming Series in 2007 and 2008. Afterwards with the same Counter-Strike roster it reverted to the name Jax Money Crew. The manager of the team was Alex "Jax" Conroy who founded the team while living in Southport, Connecticut.
Esports Heaven is an esports news and community website, formed from the merging of Cadred.org and tek-9.org in 2013. Cadred was a coverage site for competitive video gaming, or esports, owned by Heaven Media Group, a United Kingdom based marketing agency, which focuses on tech, esports, and gaming clientele.
Since the release of the Nintendo Wii, many aesthetic, ergonomic and functional accessories have been developed by third parties for the console’s controller, the Wii Remote.
MOJO, stylized as M.O.J.O., is an Android-based video game microconsole manufactured by Mad Catz.
Linda Le is an American cosplayer, costumer, model, artist and Internet personality of Vietnamese descent. She is also known as Vampy Bit Me, or just Vampy or Vamp; "Vampy" is also a name she has given to her own fictional character persona.
Marie-Laure Norindr, also known as Kayane, is a French esports player and journalist. She specializes in fighting games, in particular in the Dead or Alive, Soulcalibur and Street Fighter series, and has been playing competitively since 2001. Since then, according to Guinness World Records in 2011, she has been the most successful female participant in fighting game tournaments, especially regarding the Soulcalibur games. She is currently sponsored by Red Bull.
The fighting game community, often abbreviated to FGC, is a collective of video gamers who play fighting games such as Marvel vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat, Soulcalibur, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, The King of Fighters, Blazblue, Super Smash Bros., Tekken, Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs., Dead or Alive, Samurai Shodown, Shadow Fight 2 and many others. The fighting game community started out small in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s referred to as the grassroots era, but it has grown to a larger scale in the 2010s, with many tournaments being held around the world. This is predominantly due to the rise of esports, online gaming, and digitized viewing habits on live streaming sites such as Twitch.
Team 3D was an American esports organization that formerly had teams competing in Counter-Strike: Source, Warcraft 3, Dead or Alive 4, Halo 2, Painkiller, and Call of Duty. Team 3D was one of the most successful North American Counter-Strike teams and briefly became a part of the Championship Gaming Series (CGS). The owner Craig "Torbull" Levine decided not to continue the team after the demise of the CGS in 2009.
Adande Thorne, better known by his YouTube username Swoozie, is a Trinidadian-American YouTube personality, animator, comedian, and actor. As of August 2023, his YouTube channel has over 1.4 billion views. In 2015, he signed with the Creative Artists Agency. In January 2016, he was one of three people who interviewed President Barack Obama during a YouTube livestream.
