Mahou Daisakusen

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Mahou Daisakusen

Title screen

Developer:	Raizing
Publisher:	Able Corporation
Official site:	8ing Museum
Planning:	Kazuyuki Nakashima
Music:	Atsuhiro Motoyama
Program:	Yasunari Watanabe Yuuichi Toyama
Art:	Kenichi Yokoo Kazuyuki Nakashima
Release date:	May 1993
Next game:	Shippu Mahou Daisakusen

Mahou Daisakusen (JP:魔法大作戦, known as Sorcer Striker outside of Japan) is the first game developed by Raizing in the year 1993. It is the start of the Mahou Daisakusen series. The game features a fantasy steampunk setting with four playable characters, each with their own motivations and individual endings.

Mahou Daisakusen had somewhat obscure ports for the X68000 and FM Towns PCs shortly after the Arcade version came out, before being released for PlayStation 4 as part of the M2 Shot Triggers lineup.

Story

No one knows when it began. The mobilization of the Goblins gradually expanded, until they at last succeeded in establishing a single Empire of their own.

All this weighed heavy on the brow of King Codwenna. He gathered all the loyal knights at hand and launched an attack on the Goblin Empire, but it was a total disaster. All he managed to learn was that the Goblins were ruled by a single charismatic leader—a human no less—and that the development and mass production of magical weapons was well underway.

The King was shocked. Magical weapons, which used mana to operate, were known to exist. But no one had ever succeeded in reproducing them, and their full operation was limited and not well understood. What could the Goblins be plotting…?

The King foresaw the approaching doom of his kingdom. But the Order of Knights themselves had failed! After much internal debate, the King decided to place a tremendous bounty on the Gobligan King’s head.

Now he could only wait for a hero to arrive and save them all…

Gameplay Overview

Mahou Daisakusen is a 2 buttons game. The game has 6 stages and a final stage that is simply a boss fight (referred to as "stage 6.5" by some sources) before moving on to the second loop.

Gain fighting against Breath Dragon.

Controls

• A button: Fires standard shots from the ship at a semi-automatic rate.
• B button: Activates a bomb. Bombs are the same between characters. The bomb will take a few frames to detonate if it does not touch a enemy, solid object or the top of the screen. If any of the listed are touched by a bomb, it will go off immediately. I-frames from the bomb are only active for as long as the bomb explosion is on screen.

Items

Example of a Homing Shot weapon.

Icon	Description
Coin	These power-up the main shot up to Level 6. The higher the level the more coins needed.
Homing Shot	Adds two options focused on tracking enemies.
Wide Shot	Adds two options focused on wide area coverage.
Frontal Shot	Adds two options focused on forward damage, usually the strongest out of the 3 sub-weapons.
Bomb	Grants invincibility and heavily damages enemies when used. The player has 3 per life.

Extra Lives

Extends are awarded every 300,000 points during the first loop. There are no 1UP items or other ways to gain extra lives.

Characters

Gain

	Gain the Warrior
Portrait
Speed	Medium-Fast

Chitta

	Chitta the Witch
Portrait
Speed	Medium-Slow

Miyamoto

	Miyamoto the Samurai Dragon
Portrait
Speed	Fast

Bornnam

	Bornnam the Necromancer
Portrait
Speed	Slow

Rank

Rank in Mahou Daisakusen is a composite of several contributing elements. It affects enemy HP, the number of bullets fired by enemy attacks and the timing and frequency of enemy attacks.

Region	Difficulty
	Easy	Medium	Hard	Harder
Japan	+0	+8	+16	+24
World	+0	+4	+8	+16
Korea	+0	+8	+16	+24

Region	Loop
	1	2
Japan	+0	+24
World	+0	+16
Korea	+0	+32

Region	Stage
	1	2	3	4	5	6
Japan	+0	+2	+4	+8	+16	+24
World	+0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+6
Korea	+0	+2	+4	+10	+18	+28

Shot Power	0	1	2	3	4	5
+	0	1	2	3	4	8

Character	Sub-weapon	Level
		1	2	3
Gain	F	+4	+5	+7
	W	+2	+4	+6
	H	+2	+3	+5
Chitta	F	+5	+6	+8
	W	+3	+5	+6
	H	+2	+3	+4
Miyamoto	F	+1	+2	+4
	W	+1	+3	+5
	H	+3	+4	+6
Bornnam	F	+2	+3	+5
	W	+2	+3	+4
	H	+3	+4	+6

There is also a survival element that increments every 4096 frames. This resets to 0 upon death and at the beginning of each stage. The maximum rank value is 63.

Loops

The second loop features considerable higher rank and is much harder as a result. The player can no longer earn extends and won't release any sub-weapon items after dying. Due to the increased rank, enemy HP and aggressiveness are drastically increased. Some enemies have different behavior, such as the stage 1/5 wizards' bullets gaining slight homing capabilities.

Scoring

Scoring is very simple and consists mainly of destroying enemies, any destructible projectiles and collecting excess items.

Milking

Many enemies will fire projectiles in some way or leave minions when left alive for long enough. However, the highest scoring sections opportunities for milking are the bosses. Destroying Breath Dragon's left or right head will make it release flying enemies more often from the side that was just destroyed. Violent Slime's destructible bullets can also be milked for points to some degree. The most important boss in this regard is Bashinet Special (the Stage 4 encounter) and his spinning pods as each one of them is worth 5,800 points. Unfortunately, because the boss patterns are selected at random, whether the player earns a considerable amount of score or very little is heavily reliant on luck.

Enemy destruction

Action	Points
Very small enemies (such as the goblin foot soldiers that run along the ground) and destructible projectiles.	Multiples of 10 points.
Popcorn and other small enemies.	Multiples of 100 points.
Large enemies.	Multiples of 1,000 points.
Boss or boss parts (including the inactive boss ships at the end of stage 5).	Multiples of 10,000 points (up to 120,000 for the final boss).

Surplus items

Power-ups will grant points once the player has maxed out their shot and sub-weapons respectively. This does not apply to bombs as they never cap, though the graphic stops updating after reaching 9 bombs.

Power-up	Value
Coin	100 points
Homing Shot	1,000 points
Wide Shot	1,000 points
Frontal Shot	1,000 points

Due to the random trajectory of coins after being released a good strategy is to fly on top of the flying sacks as they appear before firing, but this isn't always possible.

Example Scores

A typical score at the end of a first loop where a large portion of enemies and all bosses are destroyed might be 1,500,000. Record scores at the end of the first loop exceed 1,900,000. See the STG Hall of Records for more scores.

Strategy

For video references see: Mahou Daisakusen/Video Index

Development History

This is the first game developed by Raizing.

Version Differences

Sorcer Striker

This is the international version. It features much lower difficulty in comparison to its Japanese counterpart. A exception to this is the Korean release, that starts roughly the same as the Japanese version difficulty-wise but slowly increases higher, being the hardest version of the game there later on. Both versions have the intro sequence and character's dialogue translated to the English language.

PS4

This is a version developed by M2 released in 2017 for PlayStation 4 as part of their Shot Trigger releases.

TBD

Gallery

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  Japanese poster.

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  International version title screen.

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  International version logo.

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