Shippu Mahou Daisakusen



Shippu Mahou Daisakusen (疾風魔法大作戦, "Kingdom Grandprix") is a game developed by Raizing and published by Eighting in 1994. It is the second game in the Mahou trilogy, the first game being Mahou Daisakusen (Sorcer Striker) and later being followed up by Great Mahou Daisakusen (Dimahoo). It is notable for being an arcade shmup with | racing elements mixed into its gameplay. It is unique among shmups for its speed change mechanics which can be used to manipulate the positions of enemies and bosses, a source of both exotic strategies and numerous bugs. Thematically and mechanically, it is much closer to Mahou Daisakusen than it is to later Raizing games such as Dimahoo or Battle Garegga.

In 1996, the game received a port to the Sega Saturn.

Story

 * T'was an age ruled by magic and machine... Still reeling from the Great Gobligan War but a year prior, a certain kingdom struggled to crush the remnants of the invading Gobligans. Skirmishes were rampant, and fear gripped the hearts of the kingdom's people like a terrible curse... Then, the king had an idea to break this curse. He would lift his people's spirits with a great competition to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their victory; a grand race through the very sky itself.


 * 1) REACH THE GOAL BY ANY MEANS
 * 2) DESTROY ANYONE WHO INTERRUPTS THE RACE
 * 3) THE WINNER SHALL RECEIVE A GREAT SUM AND HAVE A SINGLE WISH GRANTED

Gameplay Overview
The game mixes racing and shmup elements together for its core gameplay. Rival racers can be knocked into or bumped out of the way or sent flying backwards with bombs, although normal player shots will not affect them at all. The player can move faster by staying high up the screen, indicated by a trail activating behind the ship/character. Holding down the Fire button also increases your speed, but you can't fire during this mode.

Screen scroll speed affects rank. When moving at minimum speed, the game becomes slightly more difficult, with usually more numerous and faster bullets, as well as possible extra enemy spawns.

At the end of every level, the player can choose between two different stages (three stages are given as an option for the final stage).

The game has two loops. To gain entry into the second loop, the player must win the race in the first loop. In the second loop, the player has to go through all the stages they originally didn't pick in the first loop. In the case of the final stage, they get the option between the two that hadn't been chosen.

Controls
Racing controls
 * A (Press): Fires standard shots from the ship.
 * A (Hold): Activates a speed booster, speeding up the rate of screen scrolling to the maximum. You won't slow down no matter what while in this state.
 * B: Activates a bomb. Bombs are unique to every character.
 * Spin: Fly horizontally in one direction for some time (do not touch the edge of the screen) and quickly change to the opposite direction. When a character does a spin animation, they deal 3x extra impact damage, and kills from that impact damage receive potentially many bonus points.
 * Accelerate: Fly into the acceleration zone to accelerate.
 * Down (Bottom of the screen): Brake / "back brake".
 * Grind (Wall): Brake / "wall brake".
 * Bump (Enemy or other racer): A usually weaker version of the wall brake.

Characters / Ships
Gain

Chitta

Bornnam

Miyamoto

Nirvana

Kickle & Laycle

Honest John

Bul-Gin


 * Note: Fragility is the opposite measure of weight and is how the game calculates bump displacement.

Items
Collectable items include:



Coins These coins increase your Regular Shot power after collecting some. Flying sacks will drop 4 coins when hit or being hovered over.

Bomber Item You start with 3 bomber items with each extend. These clear the screen of bullets in areas the bomb hits and give invincibility frames when the player uses it.

Frontal Shot Power-up that adds another shot to the character, but can be replaced by the Homing Shot. Usually gives a shot type with high forward damage.

Homing Shot Power-up that adds another shot to the character, but can be replaced by the Frontal Shot. Gives a shot type that tracks and chases enemies.

Jewels Appearing rarely in treasures chests in a few select stages, they are worth 200, 500, or 1000 points each when collected.

Rank
There are two factors which form the final rank value in the game: temp rank and base rank.

Base rank
 * Base rank is firstly decided by the DIP switch setting and the version of the game.
 * If the base rank would be 0 or less, it is increased to a minimum of 1 (not true for JP version, which has rank 0 on easy dip stage 1).
 * Normally after each stage the base rank increases by 3 in the JP version and by 2 in overseas versions.
 * Base rank increases by an extra amount at the start of loop 2.
 * Yashiki of Ninja has a higher rank base increase than other stages. However, on loop 2 the base rank will not change based on whether you chose Yashiki of Ninja or not; the starting base rank of loop 2 is decided entirely by DIP setting and game version.

Temp rank
 * Temp rank is also heavily based on the DIP switch setting, but changes based on the situation mid-stage.
 * Dropping to minimum speed raises temp rank, while accelerating to the maximum non-boosted speed lowers it (boost speeds do not lower it further).
 * The temp rank raises during some bosses.
 * After a boss, the temp rank is minimized until the goal, and speed changes will not affect it further.
 * Powering up to max shot power has a very small effect on temp rank (sometimes less than one whole integer).
 * Powering up to max subweapon power has a very small effect on temp rank (sometimes less than one whole integer).
 * Different parts of a track may have a minor temp rank difference.
 * Losing lives doesn't have any effect on either factor of rank other than the slight decrease from weapon power loss.

Raw data

Effects of rank
Noticeably higher bullet speed, slightly more enemy health (the main source of increased enemy health is the loop 2 bonus), and sometimes more bullets added to certain patterns.

Yashiki of Ninjas has a higher rank than other levels, but all of its enemies are unique to that stage, so the increased rank isn't noticeable or any different than just having a different base difficulty for the enemies. It may increase the racing difficulty however.

Rank overflow
There are obvious instances of rank overflowing 8-bit or 16-bit values, causing enemies to either immediately lose health or fire rate.
 * In the default JP version, loop 2 crossfire turrets fire much slower if the player increases the temp rank by flying at the minimum speed.
 * In the default JP version, perhaps because of the extra rank in Yashiki of Ninja, the large statue enemies before the boss will spawn in a "flashing" state, meaning they are almost dead already.

Racing
In order to reach the 2nd loop, one must win the 1st loop's tournament by having the most |tournament points after stage 6. There are different endings for placing 2nd, 3rd, or lower. At the end of the 2nd loop, tournament points don't have any effect other than again on which ending scene is selected.

Rival racers can be bumped off the screen in either direction, somewhat affecting their race placement. Weightier ships have an have an easier time with this. Bombs can also affect rival racers, sending them hurtling backwards.

Outcast Castle and Yashiki of Ninja have stage hazards that will permanently slow rivals for the remainder of the race if they are caught behind them.

In general, having rival racers on the screen is extremely dangerous. They will very often bump the player into enemy shots or bump them behind a crushing obstacle, or otherwise just bump them into an unfavorable position which may eventually lead to a death. There is also the phenomenon where rival racers will somehow make nearby enemies lose their hit detection, effectively making the enemy invincible, which is another extremely dangerous situation. Usually one wants to be way ahead of or way behind the rival racers.

Scoring
Item collection

Collecting gems and collecting power up items while at full power awards points.

Extends
Players earn an extend every 300,000 points on default DIP settings on the first loop only, so survival is somewhat tied to scoring. It is possible to gain two extends before the second loop with normal play. By using spin kills to gain extra points, it is possible to gain four extends before the second loop. It's likely that at least one suicide will be needed to restock bombs, so in practice, only three net extends can be gained.

Spin bonus
When a spin bump deals the fatal blow to an enemy, extra bonus points are awarded. Fatal blows from shots, bombs, or non-spinning bumps will not increase score even if the player was spinning while dealing that damage. Analysis of the game's code reveals that spin kills were likely supposed to double the score from defeating enemies, yet due to the peculiarities of converting between decimal, | hexadecimal (hex), and | binary-coded decimal (or BCD), only sometimes is the bonus score actually doubled.

The problem likely arose during data entry when designers began entering point values for enemies as decimal values. These would end up converted and stored in the game as BCD. When adding enemy score to the player's total score, the game is programmed to convert the BCD to display as decimal digits in the score counter. There's no immediate issue with this pipeline of conversions and everything ends up as it should. The issue arises with the attempted "doubling" of the values which are stored as BCD, then doubled through hexadecimal math, and then ultimately displayed as BCD.

Common values greater than 700 immediately run into the problem of not being doubled because of the BCD conversion. This leads to the situation where an 800pt doubled enemy is only worth as much as a 500pt doubled enemy, and a 950pt doubled enemy is worth less than a 700pt doubled enemy. Considering the difficulty of actually performing spin kills, one can conclude that it is simply too dangerous to be worth it for enemies with certain point values.

Enemy point values

 * Main article: Shippu Mahou Daisakusen/Enemy list

Death
First loop Second loop
 * The player drops their subweapon powers all over the screen. Only the the faster characters (anyone as fast or faster than Honest John) can catch all 3 power items as they fall, and only if they die at a certain position on the screen (see techniques ).
 * The player loses a bit of shot power.
 * The player's bomb stock goes to 3.
 * Everything is the same as the first loop except the player's subweapon powers disappear completely. Of course, this means recovery is very difficult if dying in the wrong spot.

Stages
At the end of each level, the player can choose the following levels;

Stage 2A - Air Circus This stage is full of close corners and turrets that sit on the side and can be tricky to hit. Boss: Big Wheel Crab

Stage 2B - Velmatic Ocean

Water themed stage with almost no walls. Enemies come from all sides of the screen in this level, so be careful. Boss: Little Brother Gillman

Stage 3A - Outcast Castle Undead themed stage, notable for its varied types of enemies. It has mirrors that bump the player into other enemies, ghosts that can go through walls and giant worms that try to eat the player. Boss: Vampire Earl McGee-McGee

Stage 3B - Cross Fire You race inbetween an airship raid, similar to stage 2 from Mahou Daisakusen. Boss: Skull Howard the 4th

Stage 4A - Deeply Dungeon The dungeon has been set under water after the events of Sorcer Striker. Be careful for the enemies that can pop out of the sewer pipes. Boss: Prime Slime

Stage 4B - Cold Corridor

Frozen palace stage with speed sections. You can get stuck behind the walls during these parts, so you have to balance between not staying behind the screen without running into enemies. Boss: Big Brother Gillman

Stage 5A - Strato Storm This stage contains no walls. The challenge is keeping up with killing the enemies in time before they swarm the player. Boss: Gigandes

Stage 5B - Forest of Dead

Much like Outcast Castle, it's another undead themed stage. Even the boss from Outcast Castle can show up in the stage if the player attacks the big coffin. Boss: Demon Apocalypse

Stage 6A - Kingdom Grandprix Fast-paced final stage. Often a wall will sit in the middle of the screen and the player had to pick sides where to go to. Later in the stage are electrical walls that the player must avoid touching. Boss: Bashinet-R

Stage 6B - Yashiki of Ninja You enter a mansion full of ninjas and other types of enemies, which usually appear from the sides of the screen rather than the top. Often considered the hardest one out of the final stages.

Boss: Hayatemaru

Stage 6C - Kobolds Tower Throughout the stage boulder fall from the top of the tower. Be careful not to get hit by the missle launchers that sit on the sides of the screen. Boss: Weather Satellite Stimpy

Strategy
Strategy articles for Shippu Mahou Daisakusen
 * Tips unique to this game: Shippu Mahou Daisakusen/Techniques
 * 1cc / 2-all / Scoring guides: Shippu Mahou Daisakusen/Guides
 * Video index: Shippu_Mahou_Daisakusen/Video_Index

Trivia

 * Carpet made her debut as a minor enemy in this game before becoming a playable character in Armed Police Batrider.
 * In more than half of the game's stages, all bullets (which can only be destroyed by suiciding into them) are worth 10 points (20 while spinning!), but for some reason, they are all worth 0 points in the remaining stages.
 * The battleship in Crossfire suddenly loses all of its collision detection when the boss spawns.
 * Prime Slime, the boss of Deeply Dungeon, doesn't give extra points for a spin kill due to a programming error. The function which checks for the player's state of spinning checks Prime Slime's "spin" value instead. Since Prime Slime can never have a spin value, the extra points can never be acquired.
 * When a rival racer destroys an enemy, no points are awarded. However, when they kill a boss, the normal amount of points is awarded.

Rejected game names

Many Japanese names were considered for the game during development. Some of the rejected names were:
 * 魔法大革命 (Magic Great Revolution)
 * 魔法十番勝負 (Magic 10 Places Showdown)
 * 魔法大作戦２～疾風の大陸～ (Mahou Daisakusen 2 - A World of Gale Winds) was too long.
 * 魔法一直線 (Magic Straight Line) wouldn't make sense with curvy races.
 * 魔法超光速 (Magic Ultra Lightspeed) was rejected because it was basically the same name as the anime Chou Kousoku Galvion.
 * 魔法大合唱 (Magic Grand Chorus) was rejected for some reason the developers don't remember.
 * 大陸間弾道魔法大作戦 (Intercontinental Ballistic Mahou Daisakusen) was just too awful.

Bugs

Shippu Mahou Daisakusen is an extremely buggy game. Many of the bugs seem to stem from the game's implementation of variable scroll speed mechanics.


 * Game over near the end of a race doesn't count as a game over and the item fairy still appears: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/686122052


 * Sometimes Wild Wyvern never activates: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/667737057?


 * Sometimes Bashinet R's hands get stuck and his AI completely stops advancing or something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xffQRcN18Vg


 * Sometimes Prime Jelly just disappears offscreen and never returns. He continues blocking enemy spawns until the race ends.


 * Starting a co-op game on the player 2 side and pressing 1P start on the character select screen doesn't refresh the display properly, thinking it still has a credit.