Hacha Mecha Fighter

Hacha Mecha Fighter

Title screen

Developer:	NMK
Planning:	Saburou Yotsuya (alias) (and others?)
Music:	H. Mizushima Kazunori Hideya
Program:	Youichi Koyama Tamio Nakasato
Art:	Naoko Nagamine Akemi Tsunoda Kenji Yokoyama
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 "Nonsense Fighter") is a shmup developed and published 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.

Gameplay Overview

Controls

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Hacha Mecha Fighter is a two-button game.

• A: Shot
• B: Bomb

Characters

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Hitbox: the lower part of the sprite is safe

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

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From Gamest issue #68 (February 1992)

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

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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

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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 77,777,777 points (effectively 77,777,780 points).

Rank

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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

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Hacha Mecha Fighter loops infinitely. Any loop after the first one is a simple repetition of the second loop. Therefore, the difficulty stays the same.

There are only two changes from the first to the second loop

1. All enemy HP values are increased by x4.
2. The rank is fixed at maximum value and cannot be decreased again.

These two changes lead to a drastically different approach to the game. For instance, from 2-4 onwards a more pacifist play, leaving certain enemies behind is the only viable way to survive.

Scoring

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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.

End of Loop Bonus

After defeating the last boss at the end of every loop the player is awarded with a bonus that is tied to the present score counter. The bonus consists of 1,000,000 + the last six digits of the score counter. For example, if the final score is 20,000,100 the bonus is 1,000,100, but if the score counter is at 19,999,900 the bonus is 1,999,900 instead. This bonus is distinct from the no fruit bonus, which is also awarded after the last stage and which consistently is 1,000,000 points.

Death Animation Points

When the player loses a life in stages with water (stage 2 and stage 5), 300 points per frame are awarded for every option after they have dropped into the water for a total duration of 66 frames. This means that a death with 4 options yields 79,200 points.

The same 300 points per frame are awarded when an option falls on the ground and runs away to the left side of the screen. This animation takes longer depending on how far to the right the player has died (vertical position does not matter), resulting in a maximum run animation of 87 frames for a straight run to the escape point. As the options sometimes slip in their running animation, the time frame the player is awarded with points extends to 96 or 97 frames, which is particularly prone to happen with 3 or 4 options. This results in a maximum point gain of about 115,000~116,000 points.

If the options neither fall into water nor drop to the ground (e.g. in stage 1 or the beginning of stage 3), no such points are awarded after a death.

All things considered, these points are negligible in the main game but they can become crucial for scoring high in the Caravan mode of the port.

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 shorter distance of the left side enemy kill point from the left edge of the screen (Old Version: -4px; New Version: -20px). This results in objects despawning on the left side of the screen slightly earlier in Old Version.

References & Contributors

1. Page created and written by Plasmo.
2. Information on version differences provided by Trap15 based on messages posted on Discord dated February 7th, 2021.