DonPachi

DonPachi 首領蜂

DonPachi (首領蜂 "Leader Bee", abbreviated: DP) is the first game developed by CAVE, and the first entry in the DonPachi series of shoot-em-ups. It is one of the first games in its genre to introduce a chaining system, which would become a well-known staple of the series. Alongside Batsugun (by Toaplan), DonPachi is considered to be one of the progenitors of the shooting game sub-genre known as "bullet hell". It also features a man named "Bob" as the primary VO of the game, and we love him very much.

DonPachi was originally released in the arcades in 1995. It was later ported to the PlayStation and Sega Saturn home consoles. (The ports of DonPachi are considered inferior to the PCB / arcade version of the game, and are typically not played for score.)

DonPachi was followed up with DoDonPachi in 1997, leaving CAVE's mark on the shooting game world.

DON'T YOU JUST LOVE THE SWEET TASTE OF VICTORY?

Gameplay Overview

DonPachi is a three-button shooter (although the C button is turned off by default, and can be enabled in the dipswitches in service mode).

There are five stages in the game, with a second loop beginning at the end of stage five. Upon reaching the end of the second loop, the player will fight the True Last Boss, Taisabachi.

• A (Press): Fires the standard "spread" Shot weapon
• A (Hold): Fires the ship's "focus" Laser weapon (also surrounds the player with an Aura that deals severe damage)
• B: Releases a Bomb, clearing the screen of bullets and dealing massive damage to enemies on screen
  • When pressing B by itself, the player will release a Spread Bomb, which damages everything on screen
  • When pressing B while holding A, the player will release a Laser Bomb, which fires a massive laser blast from the ship that deals extremely high damage to anything in its path
• C: Auto-fire for the player's standard Shot. Shot frequency with C is higher than what can normally be achieved with putting auto-fire on button A. Therefore, some advanced chains are only possible with C

Scoring

Chaining

Capacity Bonus

One of the most important sources for score apart from the Chaining is the Capacity Bonus. When the player does not lose a single life and has not used more than two bombs overall throughout the whole game, he is rewarded with a gradually increasing Capacity Bonus after each stage. This bonus looks as follows

1-1: 100,000

1-2: 200,000

1-3: 400,000

1-4: 800,000

1-5: 2,000,000

Every stage in the loop: 5,000,000

Bee items

There are 13 bees to collect in each stage, and collecting a bee icon awards the player points, with each collected bee in a stage awarding increased point gain:

| 100 | 200 | 400 | 800 | 1,000 | 2,000 | 4,000 | 8,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 | 40,000 | 80,000 | 100,000 |

Misc Items

Star Items have to be uncovered on the ground (uncovering them contributes as a Hit for the Chain) and give 300 points each when picked up. Additionally, the player is rewarded with 1,000 points each for every Star Item collected at the end of a stage. The player is not rewarded with this end bonus if he has died after the collection of a Star Item.

Power-Up Items and Bomb Items are worth 10,000 points if picked up when fully powered up or having a full bomb stock respectively.

References

1. Primary info provided by CHA-STG