Description of DoDonPachi - MAME

This game DoDonPachi - MAME working perfectly with emulator version mame64ui, you can download on this web site.

Dodonpachi is a great—if a bit too short—Japan made manic shooter, where you take the role of a fighter pilot, whose task is to blast his way through the invasion forces of the evil ‘Mechanised Aliens’ fleet. Now, I was a bit sceptical about this one, as I usually suck a big deal at manic shooters (hey, it’s true, my reflexes are bad, sometimes makes me wonder how did I manage survive twenty three years without being hit by a bus or something). Yet I was pleasantly surprised by how incredibly addictive and easily manageable Dodonpachi is. The first thing you have to do is—believe it or not—read. On the aircraft/loadout selection screen (more about it later), pay a close attention to that little piece of info right beneath the LASER/SHOT selector. Yeah, that’s right, because lasers will make you invulnerable to small projectiles and enemies. The second thing you have to do is then to realize, how manic shooters actually work. Now, the sprite of your aircraft and the sprites of enemy projectiles may be big enough to fill the whole fricking screen. Yet—yet the actual size of projectile/player-craft hitboxes isn’t usually bigger than 1-10 pixels. So even if it looks like no living creature could possibly dodge this without using the limited special attack, it’s actually pretty much doable. Once you get this mindset all set up in your head, you’re going to have a lot of fun with Dodonpachi, believe me. I mean, it’s not at all innovative or anything, but it sure looks sweet. Now, as promised before: there are three kinds of aircraft available to fly with—two space-fighters and one helicopter. These are chosen either on the craft/loadout selection screen, before the game starts, or once you lose all your lives during the gameplay and choose to continue – in which case a small window will pop-up in the upper corner of the screen, giving you the ability to switch to a different type of aircraft. Each aircraft can be then equipped with one of two different weapon loadouts: bolt projectiles (SHOT) or energy beams (LASER TYPE). This can be done both in craft selection screen and in continue dialogue as well. Once you’re done with your selection a dropship brings you straight into the battle. You start with three lives, a set of un-upgraded weapons and a full bomb-bay. Weapons are upgraded by collecting P and MP upgrade tokens. P’s will raise your upgrade state by one level while MP’s (MAXIMUM POWER) will give you a full upgrade. Upgraded weapons are more powerful and have a wider spread—which, as you can guess, is always a good thing when it comes to manic shooters. Bombs, triggered by button 2 (main guns are fired by pressing or pressing and holding button 1, and the aircraft is obviously controlled by an 8-way joystick) are a special kind of attack that eliminates all the enemies and projectiles on the screen. As it’s been said before, however, you have only a limited number of these per life. Sure, there are B(omb) tokens available throughout the game, but there is nowhere as much of them as one might like, so use them wisely. There are seven levels in total, with the seventh stage available only after beating the first six levels without losing more than two lives and scoring a certain number of hits. Should the player not meet the requirements, the game ends with his commander congratulating him on his bravery (now, I’m saying his, but the actual gender of the pilot isn’t really mentioned anywhere, so don’t take me that seriously) and ordering him to rest before the next battle.