It's not that hard to make a bullet hell that puts you on the tightrope, much less a difficult one. It's enough to fill the screen of bullets with any excuse, the natural reaction will be to feel overwhelmed looking for the few safe spots at hand. What is hard to do is to achieve this level of creativity and elegance.

It is not only that DaiOuJou is the summit (or at least one of them) of a very specific style (danmaku) developed by a very specific circle (CAVE, starting from the impulse left by Toaplan and other descendants such as Raizing or Takumi) or a very specific person (Tsuneki Ikeda, who had been defining his style here for more than a decade since his beginnings in Toaplan), but it is a nonstop of ideas that, always maintaining a stylistic cohesion, keep each playthrough fresh because of its radical approach variations.

Something as simple, satisfying and seen afterwards as the sequence of giant enemies constantly canceling bullets when destroyed here is nothing more than a section of a level. Getting across between bullets, an easy method to achieve tension as seen in Mushihimesama Futari, a game a bit exceeding in this resource, achieves elegance by building on varied layers of bullet sweeps. A clear example is the wasp section of the fifth level. Not only stands out because of making the small enemies follow a very peculiar rail movement, or because of their alternative appearances covering the entire width of the game, or because of being protected by giant wasps that serve as a shield and as another layer of bullets to the obstacle course, but stands out because of the creativity and care of the whole. Because of having to rethink a new strategy when everything seemed under control.

The slightly superior Black Label version also enhances one of the greatest virtues of the original game that represents its philosophy very well: the hyper. A double-edged weapon that allows you to deal more damage and cover more screen in exchange of increasing the speed and cadence of enemy bullets, a mechanic that in this revision appears more frequently, encouraging to risk and improvise, the moments where the spirit of the style truly shines.

Of course, it could be criticized that the CAVE or Ikeda ideas are conservative, and even that they have given birth to descendants incapable of innovating making certain rules as unbreakable laws. However, to me it is not an accurate criticism. The fear, inexperience or ineptitude of some when it comes to achieving their own style or such a level of elegance is not the fault of the original inspiration, and the obsessive reiteration of an author or a circle on the same philosophy is far from the easily confused repetition for comfort and security. If anything, what is interesting about the style that culminates here, and that would attempt to reach the general public in later games, is giving everything for a genre lost in an arcade style that was already considered little more than a relic. Knowing that few were going to play and even fewer comprehend.

If what we want is the rare maturity in the medium of someone capable of working their style until it becomes unique, robust and unrecognizable from the influences that germinated it, like the style of Toaplan of which there is no trace left, DoDonPachi DaiOuJou is nothing but one of the clearest examples.

Finding bliss in utter sensory overload.

Man does DoDonPachi DaiOuJou feel great to play. Shooting with a powered up ship, your shots nearly covering the entire screen (or fully covering the screen if you ride with Type-B) is exhilarating but the combination of doing so while dodging bullet hell enemy shot patterns is what makes you feel like a god. At first glance these patterns can look impossible, however the lightbulb moment for me was seeing this image of your ship's hitbox from the shmups wiki. Your hitbox is a tiny fraction of the size of your ship; the same goes with enemy bullets. The result is complete instinctual play, dodging and weaving through an array of bullets requires precision but doesn't hinder the game from feeling damn good.

I finished a full loop with a boat load of continues - but as the title translates, it was a blissful death. I know for a fact that there's a massive amount of optimization and bonus content that I missed but to me, that doesn't matter - what matters is how this is one of the most satisfying game feels out there. Excited to play this on arcade hardware when I visit Galloping Ghost next month.

Also I've heard rumors of a remaster coming from M2 - fingers crossed on that.

The evolution is clear in this game, it's really cool to see a franchise evolve that much. It's actually the first of the franchise that it seems worth to talk a lot about it, so let's go.

First of all, what's more interesting about this game for me is that the chances of a failure were huge. The hardware it was made in was outdated and the Arcade Divison of Cave would be ended if the game didn't do it well, maybe this sudden change of aesthetics of space ships to robot anime girls was a way to appeal to more people, because they couldn't risk to be a failure. but i don't know, maybe the true is that the team was fucking insane and they just threw anime girls in it.
Now about the actual game, it's a refined version of the previous games, as all sequels should be.

The shooting is even more safistying because of how many giant bullets come of your space ship, it just crush all in your way. The hyper gauge is fun too and there's a good variety in the ships and characters. I felt that the game is a bit more fair than the previous one, the hitbox feels smaller but maybe that just me.

The soundtrack is masterful, Manabu Namiki did a amazing job in this game, it complements the atmosphere of the stages very well. Looking foward to his others works, i will eventually hear it in other games.

The stages are still somewhat generic, but the stage where you're in the space (stage 3 i think) is a beautifiul level, in a vertical screen at least, it's just astonishing. Those giant space ships in the background of the stage and how tiny you are in comparison is what strikes me the most. The first stage is pretty cool also, but my personal favorite is definitely the space one.

The sprites are always beautiful, but i'm not that big of a fan of this anime girls to be honest, at least the artstyle is unique enough. Is not that bad and don't even appear enough to matter btw.

To be fair, it's a great game. It's that type of game that even if you're bad, it's fun as fuck and that's what makes it worth to play it and also it's a short game, give it a try. It will literally take it 20 minutes/1 Hour MAX to beat it. btw if i played this in a arcade the money i spent in credits would be enough to buy a fucking island lol

I think the original DoDonPachi is one of the weaker early Cave shooters, having a lot of stage portions and scoring mechanics that don't jell well with one another as much as it seems they intended to do so. While still being a good game, I would prefer going back to games like Guwange or the original DonPachi nowadays.

DaiOuJou on the other hand, feels like a realization of what they wanted to originally do with DoDonPachi, and it works

This is another case of being a game that is primarily filled with highs and lows like the original DoDonPachi, but I feel DaiOuJou has them much more well sparsed throughout the game. While the balance somehow seems worse than the original, with some ships like B-S and A-L being absolutely abysmal, and how with the Shot and Laser types, dropping a life makes your secondary shot drop all levels. This wasn't as bad in the OG DDP since you still dropped power-ups upon death, but not in this game, making the supposedly expert only EX type feel like a better option in many ocassions even with the lower bomb count. Also, exclusive to WL, for some god forsaken reason, your life total cannot go up over 5 lives, making the last life up completely useless if you no missed up to that point. WL in general feels very rushed out the door, which makes sense, as it was made in around 4 to 5 months.

This is luckily the only real complaints I have with this game, everything else is a direct upgrade from DDP. Stages feel much better designed and most chains feel like they have a lot of intentionality behind them. Bosses are just as good as in DDP which is great since they were the best part of that game. Bees being a multiplier of your current chain adds a lot of neat optimization to the game, and the newly added hyper system works wonderfully as a screen clear, and scoring tool, without being extremely centralizing as in DFK. It recharges your chain meter upon activation while increasing the number of chain hits you deal, according to the number of hyper medals you have collected. All of this makes for a game very open to routing for the player, with optimizations being found everywhere, instead of being a very static but brutal affair as it was in the original DDP.

My sole reason to go back to DDP nowadays is to get the remaining 1-All with the other ships, if I want some good DDP chaining and hypering action, DaiOuJou satisfies all my needs.

For reference, this is how I rate each version:

WL: 7.5/10
DDP3: 8/10
BL: 9/10

I can tell that there’s a perfect game here, but unfortunately I can’t access it. The PS2 version is a perfect port of an imperfect, imbalanced version of the game—White Label—while the Xbox 360 port is a shoddy, ugly port of the definitive version of the game—Black Label. Running Black Label in MAME has given me results about equivalent to the 360 version… nowhere near the optimization of the Arika PS2 port, which, I must stress, feels like PURE SEX to play, and is definitely worth checking out.

I’ve put a hundred or so hours into this for a 1CC, and am still having plenty of fun playing—the music is a big step up from DDP, the hyper system is a blast, and stage 5 is most likely the best bullet hell level ever designed, period—but until I can get my hands on some OG hardware or the equivalent (PCB or FPGA), or until a better port comes out, I feel like I’ve gotta table it and move on to other things.

A batalha da terceira forma da hibachi é tipo:
Morre
Power up, Power up, Power up
Morre
Power up, Power up, Power up
Morre
Power up, Power up, Power up

'ate the turtle
'ate chaining
'ate the rails
'ate hibachi
'ate white label
'ate the washing machine
'ate second loop
'ate stealing your extends away
luv namiki
luv the visuals
luv me lenyan
simple as-