Great Mahou Daisakusen
Title screen
| Developer: | Raizing |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Capcom |
| Official site: | 8ing Museum |
| Producer: | Tatsuya Minami Masato Toyoshima |
| Planning: | Kenichi Yokoo |
| Music: | Atsuhiro Motoyama Manabu Namiki Kenichi Koyano |
| Program: | Yuichi Toyama |
| Art: | Kazuyuki Nakashima |
| Designer: | Kenichi Yokoo |
| Release date: | 2000 |
| Previous game: | Battle Bakraid |
| Next game: | Brave Blade |
Great Mahou Daisakusen, also known as Dimahoo, is a vertical scrolling shooting game developed by Raizing and published by Capcom for the CPS2 in the year 2000. It's the last game in the Mahou Daisakusen trilogy, being the sequel to Shippu Mahou Daisakusen. It features a scoring system based around hidden items, with 108 items to collect from destroyed enemies across the entire game. It never received any home console ports.
Contents
Gameplay overview
Great Mahou Daisakusen is a 3 button game. There are six stages the player must go through before finishing. It's a single loop game, although a second loop can be enabled in Service Mode if the player so desires.
Controls
- A button: fires the player's main shot.
- A button (hold): charged shot.
- B button: activates the player's bomb.
- C button: autofire for the player's main shot.
When both the A and C buttons are held together, the C button's autofire will take priority over the A button.
- Start button (hold)+A button: opens the player's inventory viewer.
- Start button: scrolls through the pages.
- Start button (hold): closes the inventory viewer.
When opening the inventory viewer, the Start button must be released after pressing the A button, otherwise the commands will conflict and the inventory will be closed immediately afterwards.
Player elements
|
- Bomb stock.
- Magic meter.
- Bomb gauge.
- Current polarity.
- Message box.
- Item name.
- Inventory viewer.
Powerups
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
 |
Collecting several of them increases the player's shot level. |
 |
Increases the player's shot level instantly. |
 |
Increases the player's magic level. |
 |
Fills a small portion of the player's bomb gauge. |
 |
Fills a large portion of the player's bomb gauge. |
 |
Increases the player's bomb stock. |
Characters
Default characters
Solo-Bang the Warrior
Speed: slow.
Shot: wide shot.
Subshot: lasers fired directly forward.
Charged shot: Sword attack fired directly forward, has piercing properties and can be manipulated by the player's movement.
Bomb: Magic bomb. It has the unique property of sticking to whatever it hits. While the bomb is active, movement speed is reduced.
Karte the Sorceress
Speed: medium-fast.
Shot: narrow shot.
Subshot: bullets aimed at enemies.
Charged shot: two knights that home-in on enemies.
Bomb: Giant thunder fired directly forward. While the bomb is active, movement speed is reduced.
Miyamoto the Dragon
Speed: fastest.
Shot: narrow shot.
Subshot: grenades fired at a 45° angle.
Charged shot: ninjas throwing shurikens. Depending on the player's magic power, there will be either 2 ninjas or 4 ninjas.
Bomb: sword slashes that travel across the screen. Extremely high damage at close range. While the bomb is active, movement speed is reduced.
Grimlen The Necromancers
Speed: slowest.
Shot: narrow shot with two side shots.
Subshot: skulls fired directly forward. The options' angle can be changed by moving vertically.
Charged shot: giant scythe with piercing properties, travels to the top of the screen and returns like a boomerang.
Bomb: ghosts that travel across the screen. Extremely high damage at close range.
Secret characters
After a credit has been inserted, the player can unlock 4 secret characters by inputting a code while the title screen is up (Up, Up, Left, Down, Down, Right, A, B, A, B, A, Start). The secret characters play very similar to the default characters, with their own unique quirks.
Gain The Battler
Speed: fast
Shot: wide shot.
Subshot: axes fired at a 45° angle.
Charged shot: Sword attack fired directly forward, has piercing properties and can be manipulated by the player's movement.
Bomb: Magic bomb. It has the unique property of sticking to whatever it hits. While the bomb is active, movement speed is reduced.
Chitta The Magic user
Speed: medium-fast.
Shot: narrow shot.
Subshot: thunders fired directly forward.
Charged shot: two genies that home-in on enemies.
Bomb: Magic bomb. It has the unique property of sticking to whatever it hits. While the bomb is active, movement speed is reduced.
Birthday The Criminal
Speed: slowest.
Shot: narrow shot with two side shots.
Subshot: bullets aimed at enemies.
Charged shot: saw that homes-in on enemies
Bomb: saws that travel across the screen. Extremely high damage at close range.
Golden The Prince
Speed: very fast.
Shot: narrow shot.
Subshot: hearts fired directly forward. The options' angle can be changed by moving vertically.
Charged shot: Golden clones that fire directly forward. Depending on the player's magic power, there will be either 2 clones or 4 clones.
Bomb: Giant laser fired directly forward. While the bomb is active, movement speed is increased.
Scoring
Item collecting
Holding the A button starts gradually increasing the player's magic meter, up to level 8 (alternatively, shooting down enemies also increases it). Releasing it triggers the player's charged shot and any enemy destroyed while it's active drops an item. Each item has 8 levels that can appear depending on where the magic meter was, collecting all of them completes a 'set' of said item and adds a score multiplier for every subsequent item collected.
Finishing a set also grants a permanent boost to the player, giving an incentive to complete some of them even in a survival context. In particular, the Shoes and Sword can make a notable difference.
| Set | Effect |
|---|---|
 |
Stronger shot. |
 |
Smaller hitbox. |
 |
Longer charged shot duration. |
 |
Smaller hitbox. |
 |
Stronger bomb. |
 |
Smaller hitbox. |
 |
Stronger subshot. |
 |
Stronger charged shot. |
 |
Magic meter charges faster. |
 |
Faster speed. |
 |
None. |
The boosts will take effect after the current stage has ended or the player loses a life
There are also secret items with hidden requirements needing to be fulfilled to obtain them. They are worth 100,000 points, making them essential in score runs. Secret items don't have levels, and while they are treated as their own set they won't increase the multiplier and only add up to the 108 items completion. Collecting all 108 items grants a 1,000,000 points bonus.
Polarities
Holding the A button periodically changes the player's polarity as the magic meter is filling up. There are red and blue polarities. Many enemies have a polarity and fire bullets imbued in it. The player's options can destroy bullets of the same polarity, and being hit by them won't result in a death, instead the player's shot and magic drop by one level. A red polarity enemy is highly vulnerable against the blue polarity and vice-versa, and always resistant to its own color. Destroyed polarity enemies have a slight influence in scoring:
- Destroyed by its opposite polarity is x2 of its base value.
- Destroyed by its own polarity is 1/2 of its base value.
- Destroyed by a bomb is 1/10 of its base value. This applies even for non-polarity enemies.
The polarity bonus rules only count if the player has at least a single magic powerup.
End of stage bonus
Once a stage has been finished, the player is rewarded with the following score bonuses:
Bomb Bonus: 10,000 pts for each bomb in stock.
Great Bonus: no idea how this works.
Surplus powerups
Collecting powerup items while at full power awards points. Interestingly, the value of large coin, magic and bomb powerups can be chained. Letting any of the chainable powerups go off-screen will reset them back to their initial score value.
|
Small coin 100 |
|
Large coin 1,000. Value increases by 1,000 until capping at 10,000 |
|
Magic book 1,000. Value increases by 1,000 until capping at 10,000 |
|
Bomb 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, caps at 50,000 |
These are extremely minuscule score gains and the player can safely ignore them in favor of developing a good item completion route. More often than not, coin and magic powerups drop at unreasonable positions where it's too dangerous (if not outright impossible) to try collecting them, while the only place where benefiting from surplus bomb powerup could be possible is stage 5.
Rank
Great Mahou Daisakusen features a basic rank system that increases by collecting items. Rank affects bullet speed and enemy fire rate.
Strategy
Destructible scenery
In stage 1 and 3, using a bomb during specific sections can destroy the scenery and reveal items.
Stage 1: Level 8 items can be uncovered from each house and the barricade at the end by using bombs on them. This allows the player to obtain high-level rare items such as the ring early on.
- First house: Sword level 8.
- Second house: Shield level 8.
- Third house: Axe level 8.
- Fourth house: Armor level 8.
- Fifth house: Ring level 8.
- Sixth house: Helmet level 8.
- Seventh house: Staff level 8.
- Barricade: Accessory level 8 (x5).
Stage 3: Before the midboss there is a little hallway with tanks and turrets. This section can be bombed to uncover a few important items, like the Dragonfly secret item and treasure level 8, the rarest out of all the regular items. Furthermore, since there's quite a lot of tanks, it's possible to quickly fill the bomb gauge and regain the lost bomb.
- Vents: Food level 8 (x2).
- Stairs: Dragonfly.
- Metallic door: Treasure level 8.
Story
The earth was really hollow.
Development History
If available, you can include information here about the hardware, the development of the game, and its general reception. Try to have as much information in this section cited as possible.
Version Differences
MAME lists four versions of Great Mahou Daisakusen, going by the ROMset names they are:
- gmahou: The Japanese version.
- dimahoou: The US version.
- dimahoo: The European version.
- dimahooud: A bootleg set. Plays the same as the US version.
Rank
Despite all the versions having difficulty set to 4 by default, dimahoo features a slightly reduced difficulty with slower bullets, enemies having lower HP and some of them being less aggressive (notably the ones that try to crash into the player).
Localization
As usual, the text in the international versions has been translated to the English language. Now the player can know how many CHAMPION BEEFS have been obtained in each stage.
Trivia
- There is a bug with the magic meter. Using a level 6 charge just as the magic meter is about to be level 7 will make enemies drop level 7 items, but with the duration of a level 6 charge shot.
- Another bug involving the charge shot is holding the A to use it and then releasing it right before it activates. When done with the right timing, enemies will drop items for a brief moment but with no charge shot activation. This is very tricky to do, and it's more noticeable with zako enemies.
Gallery
Japanese version logo
International version logo
Video References
Other
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