Hacha Mecha Fighter
Title screen
| Developer: | NMK |
|---|---|
| Music: | Person A |
| Program: | Person B |
| Art: | Person C |
| Release date: | Arcade: 1991 PS4: June 3, 2021 Switch: June 3, 2021 |
Hacha Mecha Fighter (Japanese はちゃめちゃファイター "Nonsensical Fighter") is a shmup developed by NMK in 1991. The cute and colorful theme of the game stands in stark contrast to its high difficulty. As the game makes several references to P-47 (developed by NMK in 1988), it can be considered to be somewhat of a parody shmup in NMK's catalogue.
Contents
Gameplay Overview
Controls
Hacha Mecha Fighter is a two button game.
- A: Shot
- B: Bomb
Characters
The player can choose between an otter (game start on 1p side) or an aardvark (game start on 2p side). These two characters are sometimes referred to by their Japanese designations Kawauso and Tsuchibuta respectively. There are no gameplay differences between the two so the choice can be made purely on visual preferences. All shot levels of the otter are sea animals while the aardvark has a vegetable/fruit theme.
Weapons
The shot power starts at level 1 and can be gradually increased by picking up Power Up items up to level 7 (1p side: sunfish; 2p side: daikon radish).
The game starts with 1 option accompanying the player sprite up to a maximum of 4 options. The options follow the player along and fire the same shot as the main sprite.
Using a bomb temporarily increases the size of the character sprite and hitbox. For the duration of the bomb the player becomes invincible and the shot power jumps to level 7.
Items
| image | Power Up Increases your shot level (max power after the 6th item) |
| image | Bomb Item Increases your bomb stock by 1 (max number of bombs is 8) |
| image | Option Item Adds an option to your ship (max number of options is 4) |
| image | Flower Item Value starts at 1,000 and then gradually increases up to 10,000. Value resets to 1,000 after a death. Picking up five Flower Items (regardless of point value) makes a Bomb Item appear on screen |
When the player picks up any excess item, the item is worth 10,000.
Extra Lives
There are no item pick ups to gain extra lives. The player is awarded with an extra live once for reaching 1,000,000 points and a second time for reaching 77,777,770 points [sic!].
Rank
Rank in Hacha Mecha Fighter is tied to survival time. It mainly affects the number and the speed of enemy bullets. Dying reduces rank.
On low rank, the midboss of stage 1 will only drop 4 flower items. However, when the destruction of the midboss is delayed for long enough, it will drop 8 flower items instead due to the higher rank resulting from the increased survival time.
Loops
Hacha Mecha Fighter loops infinitely. Any loop after the first loop is a simple repitition of the second loop. Therefore, the difficulty stays the same.
Aside from a number of smaller changes, the most drastic change from the first to the second loop is the increase of all enemy HP values by x4.
Scoring
Apart from obvious scoring sources such as destroying enemies, the scoring system revolves around two main mechanics: Wall hugging and fruit items.
Pressing into the right edge of the screen makes the player earn 100 points per frame, which is pretty significant, but also hard to leverage. For example, on a lot of (mid)bosses this can be exploited and the player can spend the majority of the fights hugging the edge instead of fighting the bosses. Moreover, on stages with a floor (except stage 8), touching the ground will trigger a walking animation (pushing into it is not required, just touching it is enough) for 10 points per frame. These two things can be combined in the bottom right corner of stages with a floor for a total of 110 points per frame.
Fruit items are worth 1,000 points each on pick up and result in an additional 10,000 bonus for every fruit collected at the end of one stage. The end of stage bonus for number of fruits is capped at 99 fruits. Every additional fruit item beyond that is only worth the 1,000 on pick up. There is also a special bonus of 1,000,000 points when the player manages to not pick up a single fruit during a stage.
As one fruit item is essentially worth 11,000 (1,000 on pick up and 10,000 end of stage bonus), going for fruit collection is preferred for scoring from 91 fruits onwards (total gain 1,001,000). Otherwise, obtaining the special no fruit bonus is better for scoring.
The game can be counterstopped at 99,999,999 points.
Version Differences
There are two different versions of Hacha Mecha Fighter. Those can be distinguished by the size of the NMK logo on the title screen. Besides these two, a bootleg and a prototype have also been documented but they seem to be identical or at least similar to the version with the small logo. Due to the internal changes it can be hypothesized that the version with the small logo was produced first. Therefore the labels Old Version and New Version can be applied accordingly.
| "New Version" |
This is considered to be the standard version of the game. It is the only version found on the console ports and the one used for competitive play. |
|---|---|
 "Old Version" |
Rank increases at a slower rate in this version (every 34 seconds) compared to the standard version (every 17 seconds). This is indicated by the fact that no matter how long the destruction of the midboss in stage 1 is delayed, it always drops 4 Flower Items (= lower rank).
Other changes include a smaller left side enemy kill point making despawning objects in New Version slightly easier. |
