DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu Ver1.5
Contents
DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu 1.5
DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu (怒首領蜂大復活, DoDonPachi Resurrection, abbreviated: DFK) is a game by CAVE released in 2008. The initial release of the game contained some major issues, including the possibility of an early score counterstop, and was quickly replaced with the fixed version 1.5. This can be considered the main version of the game as it has had numerous releases whereas the original 1.0 has been largel abandoned by both publishers and players and has become very hard to find.
Gameplay Overview
The sequel for DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. Features the same basic structure of two loops with an extra last boss stage in the end, and combo based scoring with a hyper system. DFK is a noticeably easier game for survival, especially when playing with a ship equipped with auto-bombs. The hypers also have the ability to erase enemy bullets with the shot, which can be used for both survival and scoring. However, the core of the scoring system is still the enemy kill chain which has not changed much from the previous games.
A new feature in the game is splitting the stages into two routes, called Omote and Ura. Fulfilling certain conditions in the game puts the player in the higher scoring Ura route, which changes the stage progression slightly and replaces the standard midbosses with revisits of the bosses from DoDonPachi. There are also two different second loops, and only in Ura do you get to fight the final of the two extra bosses.
There are two score based extends at 1,000,000,000 and 10,000,000,000 points. A hidden 1up can be found in stage 3 in both loops.
Controls
- A (Press): Fires the standard shot weapon
- A (Hold): Fires the laser weapon
- B: Uses a bomb (Bomb and Strong styles) / Switches between Normal and Boost modes (Power style)
- C: Auto-fire for the standard shot
- D: Activate the hyper counter
Note that the buttons C and D can be swapped around when starting the game.
Characters / Ships / Styles
You can pick to play as any combination of 3 ship types and 3 styles.
Ships
- Type-A: Strong focused shot straight forward, fastest movement speed
- Type-B: Slightly spread out shot which rotates towards your horizontal movement (up to 45 degrees), average movement speed
- Type-C: Wide spread out shot, slowest movement speed
Styles
- Bomb: 3 shots, moderate shot and laser power. A stock of 3 bombs (increases by 1 on death up to 6) which can be used at will or as auto-bombs when hit.
- Power: No bomb stock (one bomb item can be picked up and used only as an auto-bomb) but has two different attack modes, Normal and Boost. Normal mode has 2 shots, low shot and laser power and increased movement speed. Boost mode has 4 shots, high shot power, moderate laser power and lowered movement speed. The hyper counter also functions differently to other styles, see the next section for more information.
- Strong: 6 shots, moderate shot power and high laser power. Works same as the Bomb style in most other ways.
Weapons and basic mechanics
Your basic weapons are the shot and the laser, which work as in the previous games. The shot covers a wider area, while the laser deals focused damage to a single target and also emits a damaging aura around your ship. Generally your highest damage potential is reached by hitting a target with both the laser and the aura, although the Power style can sometimes deal even more damage by hitting targets with the full width of the Boost shot.
New to the series are lasers fired by the enemies. Your own laser can be used to block them, and the laser aura will also render you immune to enemy lasers. Big lasers fired by some enemies cannot be countered by the Bomb style or the Power style Normal mode laser. Some enemy lasers, especially in the second loop, can fire counter bullets when blocked.
The bomb is fairly standard, dealing damage to the entire screen and giving you invulnerability for its full duration. You will also automatically bomb when getting hit, which results in a much smaller bomb which lasts for a very short time only. With the Power style you can use your picked up auto-bomb as a full sized bomb by getting hit in the Normal mode.
Hyper counter
The hyper is your most important scoring tool (see the scoring section), and can also be used to aid survival. Activating it gives you a brief period on invulnerability, fills your combo gauge and makes a timer for the hyper appear around your ship. During hyper you gain a boost to your movement speed, and your laser becomes much stronger (and capable of blocking big enemy lasers in all cases). Some enemies will fire more and/or faster bullets at you during the hyper. Your shot in the hyper mode is capable of erasing enemy bullets with a varying strength (some attacks, especially of bosses, are more resistant to erasing). When the timer runs out the hyper ends, clearing out all bullets remaining in the screen and filling your combo gauge. The combo gauge will decrease slower during a hyper, and lasering enemies will hold it at a much higher level. Using a bomb will prematurely end the hyper, and if hyper is used during an active bomb, the timer will be rapidly drained during the bombs effect.
The hyper shot has two parts, green and red. This is most easily seen with the Boost mode of the Power style, which has a much shorter green part than others. If the shot hits any enemy bullets in the red part, it will be cut off at that point and will not hit anything beyond. The Boost mode also has a much higher bullet erasing power than all the other hyper shots.
The hyper can be activated when the hyper gauge is full. You gain hyper gauge by killing enemies normally and hitting them with the laser. There is some bonus gauge gain when hitting off screen enemies with the laser and when hitting enemies with the laser aura. These two methods work during hyper mode too, while normal gauge gain is disabled. The Power style can also gain hyper gauge by erasing bullets with the Boost mode shot.
Hyper rank
Your ship has a hyper rank value which modifies the effects of the hyper and increases with every hyper activated. The value ranges from 0 to 5, and is briefly visible every time on the middle of the timer when activating a hyper (it is also visible by counting the small notches in the remaining part of the hyper timer). Activating a hyper will always increase the value by 1 up to the maximum (so it is impossible to have a rank 0 hyper active). The value is decreased by 1 by using a manual bomb or dying. Starting a new stage will reset the rank back to 0 in the first loop, half it rounded down in the Omote second loop, and reduce it by 1 in the Ura second loop. Using an auto-bomb will not affect the rank, with the exception of Power style in the second loop reducing it by 1.
Higher rank will make your shot weaker in erasing enemy bullets and the green part of your shot will get shorter. Erasing bullets with a hyper may also generate small floating orbs shooting lasers at you ("Danger Lasers", by the warning sign attached to them) and their generation is drastically increased with higher rank. The Danger Lasers are highly random in both spawning and behavior. They have only 1 hp, and the laser will change into aimed bullets when the orb is destroyed (3-way aimed at rank 5). Furthermore, any erased normal bullets in the second loop can emit a counter bullet aimed roughly at you, and the chance of this happening is affected by the hyper rank (being zero at rank 1).
Items
Star (airborne)
Small score items generated by several ways. Comes in two sizes. Destroying screen clearing enemies will convert all enemy bullets and lasers to small stars. Blocked enemy lasers emit small stars. Erasing bullets with the hyper shot converts them into stars, size depending on which part of the shot is used (big stars for the part close to your ship, no stars for the red part). When your hyper ends, all enemy bullets and lasers get converted to stars (small for bullets, big for lasers). Killing bosses releases lots of small stars.
Gives you score according to the combo value (value / 10 for small, full value for big) and raises the combo value by a minimal amount. Also raises the combo gauge by a small amount, which is important for keeping your combo up during hypers.
Star (ground)
Small score item generated by killing some ground enemies. Gives a minimal amount of score. Completely irrelevant.
Bee
The series traditional hidden bee icons placed in various places in the stages. Revealed by hitting the location with the tip of your laser. All stages contain 7 bee items, and 2 extra in the Ura route. Revealed bees start as green, and will periodically change to yellow and back. Picking up a green bee increases your hyper gauge by about 1/4 of the full amount (exact number?), while picking up a yellow one gives you some insignificant amount of score. Bees will briefly flash white when changing color, and picking them up during that gives you both effects. Picking up a bee at any state will also fill your combo gauge.
Bomb
Gives an extra bomb if there is any room left in the stock. If the stock if full after that, makes you enter the Maximum mode. Being in the Maximum mode gives you a continuos score bonus, which is however irrelevantly small in this game. More important effect of the mode is enabling the auto-bomb for Power style. You also get a sizeable score bonus for finishing the second loop with the Maximum mode active (5 bil Omote / 10 bil Ura). The Maximum mode is lost if a bomb is used.
1up
Gives an extra life. Found only by destroying the big generator tower in stage 3 (both loops). You will get the item unless you destroy the tower with a bomb.
Routes
As said in the intro, the first loop stages have two possible routes to play through. In stage 1 you can go to either route, depending on your actions at the beginning of the stage. Each stage after this has the route determined by what happened before entering it, and the route cannot change during the stage. For the second loops, you are locked to the route of your loop upon entry.
In stage 1, you can enter the Ura route by preventing the big tanks from crushing any of the silos in the beginning section. There may be additional conditions (be at full hyper charge in the end of the section?) and you may be able to skip some of the silos. Better research / sources needed! If you succeed, you will see the Ura midboss warp in immediately after the section. Alternatively, you can enter the Ura route later by collecting all the bee items in two stages without dying. The stages do not have to be consecutive.
To stay in the Ura route, you have to either collect all the bee items in the stage (without dying?), or defeat the midboss (without dying / bombing?).
To enter the Omote second loop you need to clear the first loop and collect at least 35 bee items (or use at most 2 bombs?). To enter the Ura second loop you need to collect all 45 bee items (this requires playing all the stages in the Ura route) and have at most 2 used bombs and 1 death. Note that because of the auto-bombs, the death condition is only relevant for Power style.
Besides the route, there are some other differences between the second loops. In Ura, the small choppers fire 3-way shots, and the tanks have a much higher fire rate. The hyper rank decreases less in Ura and you gain less hyper gauge. The final boss Hibachi only appears in the Ura version of the extra stage and your end game bonus will be doubled.
Scoring
The base of all the scoring in the game is the combo system, which works similarly to the earlier games in the series. Refer to the DoDonPachi page for example for a more detailed description. In short, during a combo the value of every killed enemy is added to the combo value which is then added to your score. The main addition to the system is the multiplier based on the hit count. The multiplier levels are:
- 0 - 499 hits: 1x
- 500 - 999 hits: 2x
- 1000 - 2999 hits: 3x
- 3000 - 4999 hits: 4x
- 5000 - 6999 hits: 5x
- 7000 - 9999 hits: 6x
- 10000 or more hits: 7x
When active (see below) the multiplier affects your combo in couple of different ways. First, the value of every kill added to the combo value is multiplied with the multiplier. Second, the hit count gained from the kill is multiplied. Third, the score gained from the kill is the combo value multiplied by the multiplier. Note that this only applies to score gained from enemy kills, other combo value based score is not multiplied. This includes score from laser hits (both normal and boss) and score gained from star items.
You can be in three different states based on your hyper status which affect how your combo works.
If you are not hypering and the hyper gauge is not filled:
- The multiplier is not active.
- Emptying the combo gauge will make your hits, chaing value and hyper gauge slowly decrease.
If you are not hypering and the hyper gauge is filled:
- The multiplier is active.
- Emptying the combo gauge will make your combo drop.
If you are hypering:
- The multiplier is not active.
- Emptying the combo gauge will make your combo drop.
- You gain hits when hitting enemy bullets with the shot. The amount is doubled (exactly?) at hyper rank 5. The Boost shot of the Power style is excluded, except during midbosses.
- You gain hits very rapidly when blocking enemy lasers with the laser.
Bombing or dying will always drop the combo regardless of the state. This includes bossfights.
The basic scoring strategy revolves around balancing using hypers to obtain a high hit count and maximizing the time spent with the multiplier active. Note that there is no real benefit in raising the hit count beyond 10000. The no-multiplier no-hyper mode has no scoring benefits, but can be used to carry the combo over difficult parts.
Finally, unlike the previous games the combo can be carried over to the bosses normally. During the bosses your combo will not drop when emptying the combo gauge but you will instead always get the slow decrease effect. Laser hits will give you the full chain value and the multiplier is not applied. Several of the boss phases in the game can be milked for laser hits (by using invulnerable parts) or bullet cancels up to their timeouts for a noticeable score boost.
Strategy
General
Basics
First step for good scoring is learning to combo parts of the stages normally. You will not be able to reach higher scores without being able to utilize the multiplier and your combo is constantly at the risk of dropping while in the multiplier mode. Some parts are harder to combo than others, and it might not be a big loss to skip a difficult part by using a hyper.
Second step is optimizing the hit collection. The earlier you are able to get a high multiplier going, the more time you can spend in the lucrative multiplier mode later. The hit collecting techniques depend on your ship type and are also highly stage specific and are covered later. Learning to optimize your hyper recharging is also important to avoid any downtime. Most of the time you should be aiming to fully recharge your hyper during the hyper itself. A good way to do this is combining the hyper gauge gain from aura hits and lasering off screen enemies by point blanking enemies just off the top of the screen. Using the Power style makes this part easier as you can also use the Boost shot, but do note that this generally reduces your hit gain (exception for this is the midbosses, the Boost shot does generate hits during them).
The midbosses are good places for hypers in general since the lack of multiplier does not cost you anything if there are no regular enemies to combo present. Some midbosses release extra enemies if killed quickly and some need to be delayed to keep the combo going over an otherwise empty gap in the stage.
A rank 5 hyper will give you much more hits when hitting enemy bullets and since hypers will always stay on the rank level they started at, it is possible to activate a rank 5 hyper right at the end of a stage and carry it over to the beginning of the next stage. This is a good technique for gaining some extra starting hits, and it also helps keeping your hyper rank in check since the rank raise effect of the hyper happens in the previous stage.
One more thing to pay attention to is the fact that some enemies in the game have a drastically higher base point value. Because the multiplier is applied to the values added to the combo value, knowing these targets and building your strategy around them is important for improving your score. While attempting to build up your hit count, you will still want to try to kill as many of these high value targets with the multiplier on as possible.
Laser coutering
Countering enemy lasers with your hyper laser is the most important technique to learn for quickly raising your hit count. Any enemy laser can be used for this, and the hit gain increases with each countered laser. The hit gain from countering lasers works like a mini combo. The hits will start rolling up after a brief delay as long as you keep countering a laser. This combo will be broken if you destroy any other targets, even during the countering, and you will need to wait a moment again to start regaining the hits. Moving away from the laser source may also briefly break the connection and stop the hit gain for a moment.
For durable laser firing targets (the gatling laser cannons in stage 5, the laser tower at the start of stage 4, etc.) the easiest way to perform the technique is point blanking the enemy. This makes sure your laser is not hitting anything else and breaking the hit gain. You will also regain hyper gauge due to the aura effect. Some other laser firing enemies are too weak for this method (the small ground laser cannons, the big laser cannons in stage 3, etc.) and for these you just need to laser off the screen. The countered enemy lasers keep emitting a stream of small stars so you do not have to worry about breaking your combo while doing this.
The Danger Lasers spawned in mass at higher hyper ranks can also be used for the countering technique. Their random behavior makes this more unrealiable than using regular enemies, but the method can still be very useful at starts of stages for gaining more hits than what would otherwise be possible.
Loops
Just like in the previous games, the combo gauge becomes much more lenient in the second loop, and killing any enemy with the shot will bring the gauge to full. The larger enemy bullet count, especially in Ura, also makes it easier to gain big hit counts early. The downside is that higher hyper ranks become very difficult to survive due to the added counter bullets.
With the Bomb and Strong styles a common technique is using manual bombs and even suicides to lower the hyper rank in order to start stages with a safe rank 1 hyper. There is a brief period when entering bosses during which the combo is frozen, and it is possible to use bombs during it without breaking the combo. This allows you to still get some boss score while using the rank lowering method.
The Power style has no bomb stock to use, so the rank lowering technique is not usually practical with it. However due to the increased strength of the Boost mode hyper shot it is still possible to reliably survive high rank hypers too. The high number of Danger Lasers spawned while doing this also gives an unique opportunity to quickly get more hits than is possible with the other styles. Being able to start stages with the hyper rank fully maxed out in Ura is useful for this.
Individual stages
1-1
1-2
1-3
1-4
1-5
2-1
2-2
2-3
2-4
2-5
EX
