Daisenpu

[JBC]

For some reason tonight i felt compelled to play all the way through this atrocity of a game. Everything starts out nice... you've got some satisfying tunes marking your plane's neat little take off over some nicely drawn jungle scenery.

There's a cliff side coming up and some tanks appear. Once they began firing i realized how bad the manuevering of my plane was. Oh well, no bother. I'll just have to get used to it and compensate my movements for that.

So a little bit in to what i think is a 'stage' i'm confronted with a barrage of insanley stong larger tanks. I keep firing and firing and they keep moving. Bah - i'll use my bomb. Hey, neat! Those little planes that accompanied my takeoff are my bomb attack! Hey, there kamikazes! Wow! They aren't helping much!

So i die and see that the game doesn't respawn your ship - but takes the R-Type route of check-pointing. I die again and then see that it knocks me back a whole 'nother checkpoint. WHAT!?! Agh! That's the pits.

So i keep fighting and fighting and eventually make my way out of the jungle and over some water. Water filled with... YOU GUESSED IT - TANKS. Water tanks. The designers apparently ran out of imagination shortly after drawing a nice cliffside and industrial zone and filled the rest of the game up with water and jungle.

I'm wondering - gawd this is hard, where are my powerups? I must have progressed quite a bit but there are apparently only 2 levels of power in this game. One usually appears shortly after you respawn. If you don't die though the 2 power ups seem to be spread out over the course of the first half of the game. Meaning you're gonna be fighting tanks with some weak ass weaponry for a really long time.

By the way - the 'boss' enemies in this game last FOREVER. Most of them you are better off not firing at and figuring out a way to just maneuver around thier attack patterns until they roll off screen. Especially the metal block tanks that i suppose count as the second 'boss'. This is when i decided to start tool-assisting.

The game isn't divided up into levels, which i actually think is kind of cool. It just keeps going and going. Unfortunaley it also retains almost the exact same look throughout the entire thing. Like i said before - it's mostly just jungle and ocean with the occasional set of buildings or fields thrown in there.

The music does change every so often but not quite enough. It's really not bad music, i quite liked alot of it. It doesn't change quite enough though - as i started feeling a bit annoyed by some of the more repetative themes.

Finally towards the end of the game you'll come across a gigantic tank with three big turrets on it. It's pattern isn't difficult to learn but it lasts forever and never lets up. Even if you have 3 kamikaze plane attacks (which you can also detonate by pressing the button again) this thing will still last forever. I actually used all my 'bombs' and continuosly pelted it with my fully powered up attack for the entire duration of it's screen time and never destroyed it.

After that you fight some sea tanks a little more and the screen rolls back to the game's beginning. "Congratulation - Now you fight the enemy of the second round!" Classic.

I just wanted to post about my harrowing expierience with this game. I honestly dont know how many times i died due to the extremly unforgiving hit box on your ship and slow movement. Strangely enough though i enjoyed my expierience. In that same way that some people enjoy cleaning thier genitals with a brillo pad, but nonetheless - i had some fun.

Anybody else here ever waste a night with Daisenpu?

[CMoon]

For some reason tonight i felt compelled to play all the way through this atrocity of a game.

After a page long thread about Daisenpu (and Toaplan in general), now we get this...

[llabnip]

Anybody else here ever waste a night with Daisenpu?

I have "wasted" many nites with Daisenpu. But that's because I love it to bits. I play the Megadrive version - good Toaplan fun. We had a thread on this not long ago and there was much well deserved love for Daisenpu.

I'm not sure which port you played (or maybe you have the PCB).

[mulletgeezer]

there are a few fans of this game on the forum - if you look you'll see there was a small appreciation thread very recently.

that's quite an interesting critique of the game you've posted there, and i'd have to agree with much of it (especially your point about the last boss, which is stupidly durable) but despite it's many flaws i think this is a very playable game which requires a good bit of thought to play well, especially when it comes to trying to keep your support planes in play by leading enemy bullets away from them - keeping your buddies alive for a long time is strangely satisfying. did you realise that you do have smart bombs? you can trigger it by pressing the B button twice, though it's much less fun and generally less effective than the support squadron.

if you don't like the restart points then i seem to remember the US version, Twin Hawk follows the usual respawn method for US toaplan games. Sadly when i tried to have a go at my TH board yesterday i got a nasty ROM 0 ERROR message so i could be wrong

[JBC]

if you don't like the restart points then i seem to remember the US version, Twin Hawk follows the usual respawn method for US toaplan games. Sadly when i tried to have a go at my TH board yesterday i got a nasty ROM 0 ERROR message so i could be wrong

I actually didn't realize this game was Twin Hawk in the english versions until after i posted that. I went to look up other reviews of the game and happened to find that appreciation thread they where speaking of, which mentions that the english versions have respawning.

I'll give the game another go for those regions, because really despite the repetative scenery i liked the way the game looked and felt. I knew it was Toaplan just by the art direction, and i've always loved thier games. Especially Outzone and Demon's World.

Really 'atrocity' is a strong word as you can see that i didn't actually dislike the game very much. It kept me playing even through the slow control, button mashing, checkpointing, harsh collision, point blanking, overly tough baddies. and repetition.

The game just seems to have so much character and really made me feel nostalgic. As i mentioned before, i had fun - don't be sad Toaplan fans!

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

I used to own Diasenpu Custom, CD-rom for the PC-Engine...Now, notice I said "used to".
Its rare that I actually sell, or trade away a shmup, but, in my opinion...this game really warns you of its quality right there in the title.
They put the "poo", in Diasenpu, thats for sure.