The game is a remaster of the original arcade game that was ported to the Sega Saturn, instead of the Playstation port which was vastly different from the original. This was because the developers felt that the Saturn version had the best quality out of the different versions of the game, with Tomonobu Itagaki citing it as his personal favorite version of the game on top of having great personal significance to him as it was the first game he fully produced.

All the female characters in Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate have costumes based on the outfits for the promotional models for Koei Tecmo & Xbox's joint-presentation at Tokyo Game Show 2003.

The decision to add Hitomi from Dead or Alive 3 to the Dead Or Alive 2 remake was made by series producer Tomonobu Itagaki after the game's release was delayed.