| DoDonPachi | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Cave (Arcade, Saturn) SPS Co.,Ltd. (PS) |
| Publisher(s) | Atlus (Arcade, Saturn) SPS Co.,Ltd. (PS) |
| Designer(s) | Naoki Ogiwara, Akira Wakabayashi, Hiroyuki Tanaka, Junya Inoue, Riichirou Nitta Programmer: Tsuneki Ikeda, Satoshi Kohyama, Makoto Watanabe, Takashi Ichimura |
| Series | DonPachi |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, EZweb, i-mode, PlayStation Network |
| Release date(s) | 1997-02-05 (Arcade) 1998-09-10 (PS) |
| Genre(s) | Manic shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player, 2 player Co-op |
| Cabinet | Upright |
| Arcade system | Cave 1st generation |
| Display | Raster, 240 x 320 pixels (Vertical), 32768 colors |
DoDonPachi (怒首領蜂) is a vertically scrolling manic shooter arcade game developed by Cave and published by Atlus, in 1997. It was the second game developed by Cave, and the sixth on Cave's first generation arcade hardware. As with its predecessor DonPachi, the title is both a Japanese term for expressing the sound of gunfire, and a term that relates to bees (here it means "angry leader bee"). The sequel to this game is DoDonPachi II, which was made by a different developer, thus the "true" sequel is DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou.
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Compared to DonPachi, DoDonPachi is generally known for introducing new gameplay elements while improving or changing existing ones. The overall background of the game, unlike following sequels, remains more or less centered around a supposed invasion by a mysterious race of mechanized aliens, which the player is called to face throughout its run. However, more sinister and shocking secrets lie beneath the surface, accessible only to those brave and skilled enough to clear the entire game.
The player takes on the role of a squadron fighter facing a race of mechanized aliens that recently appeared and started causing havoc. There are three different ships to choose between, and each ship can be played in Laser or Shot mode.
Each aircraft has a main forward-firing gun used by tapping the two shot buttons, the style of which is determined by the type of fighter chosen. Each ship also has two small floating guns which it deploys at the start of the game. The placement of the guns is different on each craft, which affects their firing style.
If the fire button is held down, the floating guns combine in front of the ship to produce a vertical beam, which provides more firepower than standard fire. This also makes the ship move more slowly. An aura is generated around player's ship, which damages contacting enemy.
If laser is fired at close proximity to enemy, laser delivers more damage to enemy.
The ship has a limited number of bombs, which are activated by pressing the bomb button. There are two types of bombs that can be used at anytime you could normally bomb, and there is no penalty for picking a particular bomb to use, aside from the point reductions that using a bomb might give you. These bombs are triggered based on whether you're using standard fire or laser fire when the bomb button is pressed:
At the beginning of the game, player has 3 bomb slots, and the slot count increases by 1 every time player loses a life (up to 6 slots).
Each ship can be played with a Shot or Laser boost, making the chosen mode of firing more powerful; the mode is chosen as you choose your ship:
When player loses a life, the chosen weapon's power is decreased by one, and the other weapon's power is decreased to the lowest level.
There are three types of power-up items in the game, identified by different letters:
New to DoDonPachi is the addition of "MAXIMUM mode". This mode is triggered whenever a bomb is collected when all bomb slots are full. During MAXIMUM mode, player's score increases for at least 220 points per 1/60th second. The score multiplier begins with 2, and increases by 1 for every successive bomb collected in MAXIMUM mode. Whenever a bomb is used or player loses a life, MAXIMUM mode ends until bomb overstocking occurs, which will cause multiplier to resume at the last MAXIMUM mode multiplier value. The score stops increasing during boss fights.
MAXIMUM mode multiplier is carried to successive stages (including new loop).
Get Point System (GPS) from DonPachi is improved. Now there is a combo gauge on the left side of the screen that shows it builds up when a (fragment of an) enemy is destroyed. Player receives an increasing number of points for the same enemy with larger hit count. Combo gauge is drained when player fails to destroy a (fragment of an) enemy, unless enemy is hit by laser, then the combo gauge stays at red (low) level. Combo is broken when the gauge is empty. Combo hit count is increased by 1 when destroying a (fragment of an) enemy, or when using laser to continuously damaging an enemy by sufficient amount.
In boss battle, there is no combo gauge. Combo hit counter simply increases when boss is hit by player's Laser or Laser Bomb, and decreases otherwise. The part of boss being hit can be a non-critical portion to increase hit count, but not including enemies released by boss after boss battle began.
The game has 7 areas, but area 7 is only accessible by entering 2nd loop. 2nd loop is accessible by completing the first 6 areas on 1 credit and fulfilling one of the following requirements:
The second loop has the same areas, enemy patterns, and bosses as the first loop, but the amount of bullets the enemies fire is greatly increased. Destroying the area 6 boss in the second loop unlocks a secret area where you fight the trademark boss of the series, the giant mechanical bee Hachi(蜂; 'bee'). When you defeat it, you will then fight Hibachi(火蜂; 'fire bee'), true final boss in DoDonPachi. If it is defeated then the best ending is achieved.
After completing an area, player gains following scores based on performance in the completed area:
If 2nd loop is completed with 1 credit, player gets 10 million points for each reserved fighter.
Should a player fail to meet the requirements for second loop access, he/she is simply congratulated by the DonPachi Corps commander for his bravery in battle, after which the credits roll.
Should the requirements be met, the commander reveals, in a shocking twist, that the mechanized aliens were in fact the pilot's own comrades (the International version of the game renders this as a "lost fleet" legendary among cadets) trying to actually stop him/her, being aware of the commander's nefarious scheme revealed in the true and final ending. Having served its purpose, the commander's advanced fleet is ordered to annihilate the pilot, and on this premise the second loop of the game begins.
If the player completes the game once again, this time without any kind of requirement except the annihilation of the ultimate fighting machine Hibachi, in the true ending the pilot realizes that the DonPachi's true goal was to annihilate the human race, owing to its deranged commander's idea that mankind was a flawed creation to be eradicated from existence. Ironically, the existing problems of overpopulation, environmental pollution, and arms races were solved by this one-man war. The staff credits appear afterwards.
Arcadia (formerly Gamest) magazine lists the following as the current top scores worldwide for DoDonPachi:
Also called Special Version, or DDP BLUE ROM, this is a special arcade board handed out to the winner of a DoDonPachi scoring contest held by Cave to promote the game's Saturn port, in which each participant was asked to submit the highest score they could reach within a three-days period. It is essentially the same game with an extreme increase in difficulty, the addition of a Hyper Mode (a primitive form of the feature later seen in the sequel DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou) and a blue (rather than red) title screen. Extremely rare and sought after, a single specimen have been confirmed to exist so far, property of contest winner ZBL-NAI; in a 2010 press conference, Cave's Makoto Asada confirmed that no other boards have been produced and the company has lost every copy of the game's source code, effectively exposing the Campaign Version to the risk of being lost forever in case of hardware failure. Asada's comments, however, are peculiar as the very first Cave Matsuri (Cave Festival), held at the HEY! arcade in Akihabara in late December of 2006 featured not one, but two copies of the board. This event was before Asada joined the company, and is most likely the default statement the company makes to avoid ROM dump requests. While his statements, chronologically, could still be true, the loss of the two sets of ROMs and possibly the source code would have to have happened in the three years between the festival and the press conference, after having survived some 15 years prior.
The EzWeb version was released as 2 separate games.
i-mode version was released after the original DoDonPuchi port. It includes enhanced graphics over the original.
| DoDonPuchi | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Cave |
| Publisher(s) | Cave |
| Platform(s) | i-mode, Yahoo Mobile |
| Release date(s) | 2002-? |
| Genre(s) | Manic shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Cabinet | Upright |
It is a mobile version of the game.
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