Dangun Feveron

Dangun Feveron

Title Screen

Developer:	Cave
Publisher:	Nihon System
Producer:	Kenichi Takano
Music:	Nanpei Misawa Tatsuhiko Kasuga (FM Arrange) chibi-tech (VIP Arrange)
Program:	Crusty Takashi Ichimura Hiroyuki Uchida
Art:	Naoki Ogiwara Hiroyuki Tanaka
Release date:	September 1998
Previous game:	Esp Ra.De.
Next game:	Guwange

Dangun Feveron (弾銃フィーバロン, Dan jū fībaron; Fever SOS outside of Japan) is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, released in 1998 on CAVE 68000 hardware for arcades.

The game was being developed around the same time as ESP Ra.De., however Tsuneki Ikeda wasn't involved in its development as much, instead leaving the programming to "Crusty", Takashi Ichimura and Hiroyuki Uchida. The game went through several revisions, starting out as a mecha STG, but due to poor reception from location tests, the team decided on a disco theme.

The game is drastically different from other CAVE titles. Instead of slow and dense bullet patterns, the game is much faster with fewer bullets, feeling more like a Toaplan game.

The game received a home port for PlayStation 4 and XBox One in 2018, as part of M2's M2 ShotTriggers series for its 20th Anniversary. It includes the original arcade version of the game, a "FEVER" arrange, various practice modes, and two new arrange soundtracks: FM Arrange in vein of old Toaplan games by Tatsuhiko Kasuga and VIP Arrange by chibi-tech.

Story

Earth Invasion Ultimate Commander, Admiral Gratze, embarked on a mission to conquer the third planet from the sun, setting his sights on Planet FEVER. Planet FEVER was surrounded by mysterious electromagnetic waves, which are known to cause all equipment to go haywire, but Gratze thought it was a mere superstition. When it reached his private room and cut his call with his wife, Aileen, he swore destruction upon the residents of Planet Fever.

Planet FEVER Defense Force Esper Pilots Afro & McCoy, alongside Space Travelling FEVER Girl Stephanie team up to put a stop to the delusional madman.

Controls

• A (Tap): Shot
• A (Hold): Powerful Shot
• B: Bomber
• C (Dipswitch): Rapid Shot

Characters

Afro (on the left) and McCoy (on the right) are the ace pilots of Planet FEVER's Defense Force. Afro's Type-A ship is a central shot. McCoy's Type-B ship is a 3-way shot with the side shots at a 15 degree angle.

Stephanie is the leader of the "Fever Girls" Dance Troupe. Her Type-C ship is a wide shot, with the side shots at a 45 degree angle.

TODO: Uotaro, bomb differences.

Power Shots

Unlike most CAVE games, where the ships have two weapons at all times (most of the time shot+laser), in Dangun Feveron, you get to choose your second shot to use for the entire game. All power shots take roughly 1/3rd of a second holding the A button to activate.

Lock-On: Fires a stream of fast saws which bends with the player's movement. On contact with an enemy, the stream will "stick" and automatically aim at it.

Comparable to the iconic purple weapon of the Raiden series, though lacking any penetrative ability. Lock-On does more damage than a single shotstream at a long distance, but less than combined shots or point-blanking. It is also difficult to aim and disrupted by zako, making it the weakest subweapon in the majority of situations.

Bomb: Deploys missiles that slowly drift forwards. Up to three can be active simultaneously. Each missile grows in power the longer it is active. On impact, creates a large explosion; enemies killed by the explosion will create more explosions, potentially causing a chain reaction.

Bomb is entirely routing-oriented, capable of achieving the highest scores via both the highest damage and the best screen coverage of any subweapon, but is worthless when used haphazardly. Bomb is typically avoided with Type C as the combination has no tools versus bosses, and is often paired with Type A for the opposite reason.

Roll: Charge shot. Deploys up to 8 blue orbs that "unwind" into a clockwise orbit. Upon release, the orbs fly straight forward and penetrate all enemies, damaging for each frame in contact.

Roll is a flexible subweapon, capable of dealing a consistently large amount of damage from the bottom of the screen with minimal preparation. The combination of safety and power makes it by far the most effective anti-boss weapon. Due to how the orbs deploy, both short and long Roll charges are weak against single targets. Half-charging is the most useful technique, releasing multiple overlapping orbs in a small area.

Speed

Unlike other CAVE games, the ships do not have their own speed, nor do they have a slow movement when using the secondary shot. Instead, you choose what speed your ship will be at for the entire game.
Player speeds below 3 are not considered viable for scoring as they will be unable to catch enemies quickly enough or to chase items.

Items

Icon	Description
	Power-Up Main Shot Increases the strength of the player's main shot. Equivalent to 5 Cyborgs when fully powered up.
	Power-Up Way Shot Increases the strength of the side shots of the player's ship. Equivalent to 5 Cyborgs when fully powered up.
	Score Cyborg Discomen Increases the chain counter by 1 point, up to 999, then awards points equal to the chain. More of them drop from enemies if speedkilled. Multiplier value is reset to 1 if even one leaves the top of the screen.
	Bomb Item Bomb Gives the player an extra bomb to use, maximum number of bombs in stock is 4. Equivalent to 5 Cyborgs at 4 bombs.
	Extend Item 1-Up, Life, Heart Increases the player's life stock by one, only given out if the player collects 2000 cyborgs.

Gameplay

Concept

Dangun Feveron is a Caravan principle game: All stages are a fixed length, but destroying targets quickly will cause more to appear. Each stage is divided into one or more "tables" of enemy waves that switch at fixed points. Completely clearing an enemy table before it switches out will cause it to loop and start over, providing a constant supply of targets.

Although the concept is simple, the details are more complicated. The game does not check for cleared waves continuously; it uses discrete intervals which vary by the waves in question. In some cases missing one enemy will cause a delay, while in others only specific enemies need to be destroyed to advance.

No-missing the entire game will cause a TLB to appear after the stage 5 boss. Infamously, this TLB is bugged on the Japanese version of the game, and is unable to kill the player unless a bomb is used.

Score mechanics

Flying enemies killed quickly will drop Cyborgs, which will drift to the bottom of the screen, then bounce to the top and disappear. Each Cyborg collected increments the chain by 1, then gives points equal to the chain counter. Letting any single Cyborg escape will reset the chain counter to 1. The point value of all destroyed targets is also equal to the chain count. The chain maxes out at 999 per stage.

The number of Cyborgs dropped by each enemy decays over time at a rate determined by the enemy type, down to 0. Boss parts also decay in Cyborg count, and a timed-out boss will drop nothing.

Cyborgs dropped by killed enemies appear in random positions inside the enemy's collision hitbox. Cyborgs drift in a fixed pattern, but their starting position in the sequence is random. Cyborgs near the edges of the screen will be forced away from the edge.

Up to 50 Cyborgs can be on screen at once. Additional Cyborgs past this limit simply don't appear. Cyborgs are emptied from memory when the floating text attached to them goes away, not immediately after picking them up, which can lead to some deceptive timings.

After defeating a boss, the player is given a boss bonus of

current chain * stage Cyborg total

up to 999^2 or 998,001. Timed-out bosses do not award a bonus.

Upon clearing the game, the player is awarded 500,000 points per spare life and 100,000 points per spare bomb. If the player defeats the TLB, they are instead awarded 1,000,000 points per life and 200,000 points per bomb.

Strategy & techniques

The game's announcer explains its scoring principles rather well.

• Don't Lose It (Aim for 999 Disco People)

Maintaining a 999 chain before the end of the stage will result in a huge boss bonus of 998,001 points. For all score-viable shots, this is possible in every stage past stage 1, contributing just under 4 million by itself.

• Get To The Leader

Defeating the TLB will award a second boss bonus (potentially 998,001) and will double the clear bonuses from spare lives and bombs. Due to the TLB mandating a no-miss, and the TLB invincibility bug in the JP version of the game, reaching the TLB should guarantee at minimum another 4 million from spare lives.

• Hurry Up!

Once a 999 chain has been reached, scoring stops scaling multiplicatively. Making significant score gains becomes dependent on dense "cash-out" waves that offer sheer volume of Cyborgs and/or enemies to kill. Advance the waves as efficiently as possible to loop these high scoring areas.

Pointblanking

Type B pointblanking with all three shotstreams. The red box approximates the part of the boss being hit.

The most efficient way to damage a single target is by using full-auto shot at close range. Successful pointblanking causes a large pink hitspark to appear. Due to the size of the player's projectiles, it's not necessary to be extremely close to do full damage. Type C will need to get closer than the others due to the width of its side shots.

Shooting offscreen enemies

Enemies off the left or right screen edges can be shot before they appear. Cyborgs dropped by such enemies will appear normally. Type A's shot lacks the horizontal range to make use of this, which can be mitigated by picking A-Bomb.

Rank

Rank varies through decimal values 0-63. It affects enemy bullet speed, and in fewer cases firing rate. Rank is primarily determined by stage and powerup status with survival time as a secondary factor. Due to its lack of powerups, Uotaro experiences significantly lower rank throughout the game compared to the normal ships. Strategic rank management is nonexistent, and during the final two stages rank reduction is minimal.

An incomplete explanation is below for the curious. ^{[needs more research]}

Each stage has a baseline rank value. These baselines are affected by the difficulty dipswitch in the service menu.

Stage 1	13
Stage 2	23
Stage 3	23
Stage 4	43
Stage 5	53

At the start of each stage, the rank increases by the difference between the current and new baseline. For example, going from stage 1 to stage 2 will increase rank by 10.

Rank increases gradually over time, and quickly by powering up. Chaining or collecting excess powerups does not influence it.

1st, 2nd powerups	0
3rd, 4th, 5th powerups	+4 each
6th powerup	+2
Bomb in stock	+1 each
Extra life in stock	+1 each after all other factors (i.e. affects minimum rank)

On death, rank is set to the stage baseline. After respawn, it increases by 3 for the player's refilled bombs, then 1 is subtracted for the lost life.

Rank is truncated to 63 at the end of the calculation. This has a marginal effect on stages 4 and 5, where bombing at maximum rank may not reduce it, because the true rank is above 63.

Specific strategy

TODO:

• Stage 1: Wave shortcuts
• Stage 2: Midboss
• Stage 3: Wave despawn
• Stage 3: Type 2 despawn
• Stage 3: Turret glitch
• Stage 3: 3-Boss strategy
• Stage 4: Delayed table 2 spawn
• Stage 4: Table 2 -> 3 strategies
• Stage 5: Station 1?
• Stage 5: 5-Boss strategy, missile barrage
• Stage 5: TLB patterns?