- Tested on Nintendo Switch somewhere in the middle of the Bahamas this winter! I spent without counting... Game purchased by investigating the limbs of the shop.
- I'm still waiting for the next Treasure game, the fallen arcade god in disgrace...
- Complete run captured at the end of item in max difficulty.
- Screenshots editor... um... it was hard to get houses in the middle of the game!
For whom has already been interested in schmups, the name of DoDonPachi immediately evokes the alpha and the omega of the arcade, the Grail of any good dolorist anxious to experience its limits at the price of blood and tears. DoDonPachi is known for catapulting the Bullet Hell, you know this kind of subtle where the screen is saturated with projectiles that you must avoid at all speed. In response, enemy ships of myriad missiles and generous lasers are watered. Why would you say such penance?
A pachyderm of the genus
I'd say headily that one Jesus commanded us to tender the other cheek after the slap. The Topico councils of the Gospels, the devs of Cave applied them to the letter. A little too much... And it's not a slap that we take at the beginning but a correction, a real beating in rule that we come up with as never before. Yet once we've picked up our snags and bandaged our wounds from the remains of our pride, we have the rage of abhorrent, the reverse of failure. The rage that promises us to touch the gates of the resurrection, the honey rivers, the virgin miles and the whole barda. Fever flames and goes off; Please accept my repentance: confidences of a neophyte for this guilty pleasure (a little) maso but so cheerful.
So I sinned wandering around the shop at the sale by taking off a few obols to buy the beast. Ah, the shop, this strange cave of Ali Baba where a teasing algo can pass you from Peggle 2 to DoDonPachi. This flagship of the legendary Cave editor had remained engraved in my memory at the time of the beginning of the internet. It was long before the videos of cats and tutos of Tibo Inshape the exploration of this new territory. A real golden age when you think about it. All these afternoons where we wandered on search engines to ask everything and anything about Yahoo, the new god of the modern world (before Gogole as my techno teacher said). In search of meaning at a teenage period that is said to be the flower of the torments of youth, I sought my own answers to the turpitudes of the world by typing « shoot them up impossible ».
This is how I slipped for the first time on the slope of DoDonPachi. I remember seeing the first videos of this maelstrom of colors that was amazement at so much dishonest sadism. Who are these devs who want to make us suffer and who are his martyrs ready to bear such a burden? Proud of my discovery, I later presented this UFO to friends to show them how smart the video game was. I remember their meducated mine, divided between a certain scepticism in the face of my vain attempt and a touch of pity that is usually covered by a nice smile between educated people. Years later, obsession wanders again and again so much that I find myself buying the game on Xbox 360, without ever daring to seriously launch it. Religiously remained in his sarcophagus of plastic, it was necessary to wait this winter for me to finally take the courage to release the Nekonomikon from the Shoot them up on Switch. All because the OLED screen of the console gave me hope for a lost paradise. The heart has its reasons that reason ignores...
Immediately, we know we're dealing with a game that doesn't try to take us by the hand. Six versions with only distinctive signs of the lolitas that look perfectly in the cannons of any good fighter pilot (hum). One thing is for sure, it's a Japanese game... A number for each version 1.5, 1.51, some "arranged" mentions and a certain "black label", so what is this devilry that immediately attracts my attention? No explanation, nada, has the image of this table of scores eternally remained grayed in the menus. But Black LabelIt's red, it's alive and it smells like blood here. I like that, it's this version that will be mine. I chose you. You'll make me suffer.
It would seem that after research on Reddit's forum, it is one of the fiercest versions with new, more angry musical arrangements. And the OST marked by demeasurement has nothing to do with elevator music. It is also in my humble opinion one of the modes that proposes a score system among the most addictive and demanding, we will return to it. I've been waiting 20 years to play DoDonPachi and this one only offers 10 seconds to choose one of the three ships. It's a hard work even though I barely have time to make my choice. What an indignity, even the menus want our skin!
For each vessel, three common modes: bomb, medium and Strong. The last mode is the one that will interest us with maximum fire power and in return maximum aggressiveness of the machine: the real experience DoDonPachi supplement pain. We have nothing without nothing! I chose the option Self-bomb In addition, which helps avoid losing one of our three precious lives by dropping an explosive when hit by a projectile. In this, the game still makes the effort to reach out to the new players even if I see from here the professionals screaming at here. Keeping control from end to end: sometimes neurotic mantra of experts of the genre.
You who enter here, give up all hope
This strong mode is also and especially a liveliness that has nothing to do with the other two mentioned above. The speed and number of projectiles is multiplied and unless you want to start immediately in the hard, the old wise men will advise you some introductory parts in the first two modes to try the ground. (Schizophrenic mode activated) To hell with wisdom for my part, so what a part looks like Strong In all this? Three lives, three bombs and five progressive levels in terms of difficulty. Two shots, a classic in gusts and a laser that destroys the hearts of the opposing ships and lifts our hyper gauge.
Like the incredible Bangai-o signed Treasure, another uncomplexed arcade sponsor, the game rests on a mechanics of Cancel which allows the pellets to be cancelled on the screen after having left the enemy dry. What we gain by laser, we lose it quickly, which exposes us to endless swarms. In this way, we find ourselves insolently flying between the bullets by suitably measuring the lasers and the gusts. Like casinos in Las Vegas (remembering this Jurassic Park machine that's mumbling 800 dollars), the fruit of our greed is rewarded with an avalanche of stars that make the screen curl when they are drawn to us. No idea what they bring exactly to my final score but it shines! Guaranteed effect. Understanding the exact calculation of the score is a matter of alchemy anyway.
It gives rise to a magnificent retrokistch ballet where sudden accelerations allow to sneak between the rare smilers that emerge in the little space remaining in the middle of this fireworks. Fortunately our ship is not completely vulnerable and the hitbox is only placed on a large glittering pixel in the center of the aircraft. So it's the nearest millimetre that we escape death when we've exhausted our meagre bomb stock. The more enemies are chained without being touched, the more the combo counter panicles until you climb in the thousands and it's really not a small matter to keep it intact a full level. To blow a little in front of a flood of fire, the hyper mechanics allow to be protected from a shield that simmers over time while having access to much more powerful green shots and lasers. A gift that purists may find too generous.
But such a privilege, it pays and rubies on nails. The more it is used, the harder the enemies become, the more the dumplings fuse in numbers as in terms of the velocity of what I understood or rather experienced. In other words, using hyper means bleeding yourself. A dilemma that gives great meaning to the quest for the score and brings Sadism from balance to experience. In the middle of this frenzy, we can harvest bees hidden in the decor. The latter pass from green to orange, with a gain of hyper in the first case and a combo multiplier boosted by the extinction of all the balls on screen in the second. These bonuses also take part in the perpetual movement of this dance against Death with a sharp sense of rhythm that even allows to enjoy the two advantages by basing on the bee at the moment when it changes color. Magic!
Do me a favor, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Dodonpachi is therefore a test in the literal sense of the term. It is that it is a matter of proving not by finishing it, which is no problem since the title does not limit the credits but by achieving the perfect score. And for that, good luck! If the margin of progression is stupendous, the last level has no words to characterize it so much it wants us to harm. A pure arcade exercise that will ask you to move from resignation to perseverance. And past the torgnole, we surprise ourselves to narrate the machine and try maneuvers and pirouettes that even Tom Cruise would not dare realize in Top Gun.
But like any dance, we risk walking on his partner's feet and Dodonpachi ne manquera pas de vous gifler en retour. Si les scores sont sauvegardés dans le compteur final à chaque fin de niveau, utiliser un continu en cours de niveau remet le compteur à 0 pour le niveau en cours. Autant dire qu’il peut y avoir un côté terriblement frustrant à mourir au boss du niveau après avoir fait de sacrés combos jusqu’ici. Tout particulièrement alors que ces derniers ne sont pas avares en munitions et balancent la purée pour vous mettre à genoux. Tant pis, on persévère, on revient et on progresse jusqu’à n’utiliser aucun crédit avant le deuxième puis le troisième niveau. Mais le cinquième c’est la baffe qu’on n’a pas loupée, celle qui ramène le gamin avorton à sa place de menu fretin.
Des lasers partout tout le temps, ennemis invincibles qui gravitent autour de vous, niveau extrêmement long et boss sous amphètes : oui vous n’étiez qu’un mortel après tout… Finissons par un run complet pour comprendre l’ascèse nécessaire pour tutoyer des scores corrects mais à des années lumières des otakous qui ont poncé la franchise depuis 1993. Funfact, Dodonpachi est le seul jeu où la campagne finie se conclue quoi qu’il arrive par un écran de game over et un message du « scénario » pour nous expliquer qu’on a été manipulé depuis le départ…. Le sadisme jusqu’au bout… (Flambée d’adrénaline soudaine) Jésus je crie ton nom, Dodonpachi, je me vengerai ! Tu as nourri ma jeunesse, tu occuperas ma retraite, ce pécule miséreux que personne ne touchera plus de toute façon. Je profiterai d’un monde à l’agonie pour te rendre la monnaie de ta pièce, pour toutes ces raclées qui m’ont fait écrire ses lignes. Et pour tous les autres martyrs qui comme moi ont pêché en tombant sur Dodonpachi sur l’eshop. Amen.
[…] Néanmoins et malgré toutes ces approximations, survoler la campagne en une petite dizaine d’heures comporte quelques séquences mémorables. Deux niveaux spécifiques sont particulièrement originaux : le troisième avec une course effrénée à contre-sens sur une autoroute et cascade digne de F-Zero et le sixième qui est portée par une soundtrack atmosphérique inattendue. Les boss eux-aussi sont toujours bien amenés même si on est loin des patterns à maîtriser du bout des doigts d’un jeu culte comme DoDonPachi (lire notre critique). […]