Cave Retrospective - Ch 1. DonPachi

[@guitaroach]

I discovered Donpachi earlier this year. Refreshing to see some Cave origin stories. Looking forward to the rest of this series.

[@cat-pat8310]

Thank you, that means a lot 🙏

[@dr_ubo]

this was actually a pretty nice video about Donpachi. I'm a big CAVE fan and a huge shmup fan at that. I like that you admit you're no shmup master or anything, no pretensions either. There are ways to approach these games, even if some things every now and then are actually absolute bullshit out of nowhere. I would like more people outside of the "shmup crowd" would take a look at these games with the same point of view you have. Earned a sub, keep it up.

[@cat-pat8310]

I really appreciate this comment. I tried my best to illustrate that this retrospective is from a viewpoint of a casual that really loves cave. I'm not the electric underground, although I like his content, I'm not quite capable yet to 1 cc a game lol, maybe one day though! Thanks again for sharing your input. 🙏

[@BareKnuckleRoo]

Now that I've had a chance to watch it properly, I can give some more meaningful comments about the video itself! • The squeaky wheel SFX when you pick up stars is super odd, no argument there. • Type B (the heli) actually has the strongest shot in the game with C button autofire, being equal or slightly better than the laser is if you're at about medium range from enemies. No other games in the series have this quirk though. The "aura" surrounding your ship is always super strong due to being 2x as powerful as the laser itself is (and the laser appears to be programmed to get a damage bonus on bosses). • The game is a lot more enjoyable with the audio turned off. You can do this in MAME by using Tab to open up the sound channels and apparently in Donpachi the music is a separate channel from the sound and voices! Not sureif it's doable in a MiSter though... Ever since discovering this I've enjoyed it a lot more, but not all games are like this and MAME only "sees" one audio channel for music and sfx. It's a shame, because in their Toaplan days they used hardware that had perfectly good sample rates on the music (like in V-V, Batsugun) so it's unfortunate they went cheap with the audio quality in Donpachi. The music actually sounds decent enough in the ports where the sound channels aren't atrociously poor. It's sad, but their later arcade games also used fairly poor sample rates for the music compared to what other games had (Dodonpachi Saidaioujou's music is heavily compressed in the arcade port, though this was addressed in the later EXA arcade release). • CAVE loves to write plots that put the player at odds with the intense shooting action. Generally, their themes are about how the violence itself is actually very tragic and is awful for everyone involved, including the protagonists. There are few CAVE games with happy endings. :P • It's not really a quarter muncher, at least not in the first loop. The difficulty is actually pretty reasonably low, and the only noteworthy thing about Donpachi compared to later games is there's more instances where memorization is needed to prevent enemies from slamming into you from behind (during waves in stage 4 and at the end of stage 5). Dodonpachi has none of those and Progear's only enemies from behind really show up right before the final boss. However, the enemy bullet patterns themselves in Donpachi are very manageable relative even to earlier games made when many of them were part of Toaplan (most Toaplan shmups and most CAVE shmups are harder to 1CC than clearing the first loop of Donpachi). You also get a TON of bombs; every 3 bombs used increments +1 to your max bomb stock, and the USA version of Donpachi refills ALL your bombs at the end of each level, encouraging you to actually be aggressive about bomb use. Bullet speeds also aren't too fast. It's why the game is considered pretty easy to get a 1cc of as far as shmups go, at least for clearing the first loop (though 1ccing both loops is pretty brutal due to 2-3, 2-4 and 2-5). Just make sure you're not playing the Hong Kong version which makes your hitbox MASSIVE. • The second loop's revenge bullets are really rough because they force you to relearn the game and hold back your shots strategically. Dodonpachi has a more fun loop 2 I think, but it's gated and can't be seen unless you trigger one of the requirements.

[@Pyromania-ew8jp]

This is awesome. very well edited and put together, never thought id see a cave retrospective like this so please keep em comin!!

[@cat-pat8310]

Thanks man! I appreciate it! 🙏

[@antoniohenderson6090]

So glad to have a new video! Let's go!

[@cat-pat8310]

Thanks pal! Already working on the next one!

[@VinuShmup]

Excellent video mate 👍, I really enjoy it and looking forward to see the episode about Dodonpachi! I subscribed 😁

[@treepizzle]

Wow great video! Thank you

[@cat-pat8310]

Thank you for stopping by!

[@michielkroder4031]

About time someone did this. Subbed!

[@fennkell]

This game is great, love it!

[@thirteenthirtyseven4730]

On the story: The basic premise of pretty much every ‘military’ shmup (i.e. pretty much most of them at the time) is that the player controls some hero warding off overwhelming forces of bad guys (for great justice). Developers exploring, stretching and twisting that premise is pretty much an artistic necessity. I love the spin that RayForce has on the theme. The game is somewhat ambiguous on what it is that you are actually shooting. Maybe it’s an evil AI threatening what’s left of humanity, maybe you are the protagonist in an Ender’s Game like scenario. Who knows. Well, the game target locks those giant ships in the background, so better fire those pretty laz0rz, right?

[@MPSTG_brb]

Interesting to hear a new/casual player's view on these games. I'd never heard criticism on stage 2 being difficult. I guess we lose perspective after we've put enough time into these games. Donpachi is usually consider an easier 1CC than Dodonpachi, and most people that dislike its pace claim that is too easy until the 4th stage and then too difficult/unfair during the last 2 stages (not counting the second loop, that's just for people who have mastered the first one). If you stick around and come back, you'll reach stage 4 on 1 credit in no time ^^ I myself like it a lot and consider the easier, unevenly paced first 3 stages something good for experimenting with the scoring system.

[@cat-pat8310]

I'll be honest, It probably was a "get gud" moment for me lol.

[@BareKnuckleRoo]

I can tell by the way the rapid shots are spaced out that you have C button autofire disabled. I would strongly recommend turning it on as it's the way the game is played competitively in Japan (and in the shmup community in general). In addition to negating the need to button mash, it also provides a unique benefit of allowing the rapid fire to shoot more shots than you can by mashing without it, something not seen in subsequent CAVE games. The damage is better balanced with it turned on, honestly, as the laser makes you move quite slow in this game, meaning you'll already want to use the rapid shot a lot.

[@BareKnuckleRoo]

(In MAME, hold F2 for about 8 seconds to access the options menu for the game.)

[@cat-pat8310]

Good to know! Appreciate the feedback! I think autofire is already enabled in dodonpachi in the Mister settings, so I think you'll be able to see that in the next video. If you see any inconsistencies like that, it's because all my footage was pre recorded awhile back. So I'm using that until I move on to the next 5 cave shmups to record.

[@BareKnuckleRoo]

@@cat-pat8310 It's not a big deal for a review video, it's just helpful to know if you're planning on revisiting it to play it! I'm currently trying to 1CC it so having it on spares my fingers, haha. When C button is enabled in Donpachi, the shots actually look much denser/less spaced out, like with no visible gaps. I don't think any of the subsequent CAVE games made tapping A any different than holding C, so it'd be impossible to see if you're using autofire or not in Dodonpachi and beyond just by seeing gameplay footage. :)

[@DonnyKirkMusic]

I always wondered about Donpachi's soundtrack. It pretty much sounds as though they fully compressed the music instead of sequencing it like in a typical game, they actually took an entire chunk of music (with the drums and all) and compressed it down. Maybe they had issues getting the music to work, but sound fx played fine, so they were like "screw it, lets make the music a sound effect, basically".

[@jasp2003]

I have it on Saturn so naturally, I haven’t seen the last stages

[@cat-pat8310]

Hah! Yeah, I'd be in the same boat as you if it wasn't for emulation.

[@weebnerdgaming4908]

A brief mention. While CAVE was new at the time of DonPachi's release, CAVE consisted of former Toaplan employees, notably Tsuneki Ikeda of Batsugun fame. I respect your opinion that DonPachi is decent and designed as a coin muncher... but I'd say it's still better made than Gekirindan and Kyukyoku Tiger II. Both games also made by fellow former Toaplan employees. Ikeda team's track record with V-V and Batsugun proved its worth in DonPachi.

[@BamdTheBamd]

could you turn up your mic a bit also bombs were originally meant to be used offensively like in tiger heli. they'd lack i frames, only cancel bullets within their radius and even have a delay before they went off, preventing reactive bombing. in games like raiden fighters you'd bomb multiple enemies at the same time before they could shoot for score multipliers, rather than to save your own hide

[@cat-pat8310]

Mic up, you got it 👍

[@DeanError]

just played through metal black, recommend that one as well. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qmSlc5auaL2SndE & kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y3XMhaymd7yHf9E for a little look.

[@CAVEDATA]

Weird review.

[@LBPreviews]

Good video, but I think you're quite bad at shmups. Or you're playing it on hardware with a lot of input lag.

[@cat-pat8310]

No, I'm quite bad. 😂 Love Cave anyway!

[@LBPreviews]

@@cat-pat8310 LOL