I was poking around in the original Model 2 DOA1 to see if I could find any beta or leftover stuff and I ended up finding the spot in memory that controls your selected character slot. The final arcade release has 13 character slots with 4 of them being cut (
DOA1's initial pitch had 12 planned characters and ironically only 2 were female)- if you try to load the cut characters some parts
do load but most of their files and other references are missing and it seems like the game defaults to character slot 00 (i.e. Zack) to fill in the blanks. (I'm speculating on the technical side as I don't actually know what's going on under the hood.)
So, that screenshot above is actually character slot 0A, which is a cut version of Raidou apparently? It loads Zack's model but not his accessories, probably because his accessories (glasses) are specific to him and separate objects with separate calls.
Raidou the boss, is one slot higher at 0B and is completely playable and even has
an icon for the ranking screen,
a complete credits outro,
a second outfit, and
win and lose poses. Raidou was just a regular character until the decided to change him into a boss at some point in development - he initially was called Fondei and was proposed to use Tai Chi.
Lei-Fang came after the fact, that's why she's the very last character in the game with slot 0C (see list below). The time frame of events is kind of weird because
Leifang and Fondei were together on one of the earliest ever promotional posters. So I'm really curious as to what movesets both of those characters actually used in-game at that time.
Lei-Fang's predecessor was a Chinese female named Ryuhen Hua (龍麗華) that used Chinese Kenpo martial arts.
Code:
DOA1 Character IDs
00 "Zack",
01 "Tina",
02 "Jann Lee",
03 *BETA "TINA",
04 "Ryu Hayabusa",
05 "Kasumi",
06 "Gen-Fu",
07 *BETA "CHAMPION",
08 "Bayman",
09 *BETA "BLANK",
0A *BETA "RAIDOU",
0B "Raidou",
0C "Lei-Fang",
The cut characters' slot names were blanked out in the Playstation port (not sure about Saturn):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpR8pRQV4AEK1xy.jpg
Bass,
proposed in the very first pitch, took slot 09 in the PSX ver (presumably that was his slot initially before he was cut because Ayane, a brand new character, was given the new slot 0D after Lei-Fang).
I feel the most interesting slot is 07 aka "Champion" - I "think" it's Kelly's moveset, which is a beta Zack moveset and is kind of playable but kind of funky:
https://youtu.be/fLf5aiFkJhI
It's super early and think Team Ninja had yet to decide on a methodology for the buttons inputs - you know how we have HPK and a PPPPP string is all punches? Well, I think before P and K were Punch and Kick they were just seen as "action" buttons. Like, Champion's PP is Zack's PK for example.
Anyway, here are two twitter threads where I posted more pics and info:
https://twitter.com/ryu_highabusa/status/1048369924517707776 and
https://twitter.com/ryu_highabusa/status/1050576264556236800
I'd post more but this is a DOA6 thread, not a DOA general or beta thread and I'm already pushing it. Actually, here's the Cheat Engine cheat table I've created:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/v0l6y3ylyjzd9dj/DOAAemulator_multicpu.CT/file#
I've found the values and have to recalculate each time I open up a new instance (search for lifebar: 160 is the default health against the CPU, 200 is the default in a 2P game) but I'm not sure how to figure out the whole pointer/disassembly situation so I could make a usable code/script for the M2 emulator or Mame. If anybody could help that'd be wonderful... Also, someone else on Twitter found a debug mode that I haven't been able to access yet myself but it's there waiting to be unlocked.