Today I like to review quite unique shmup on arcade: Athena’s Daioh (1993). Dai means “Great” in Japanese and Oh means “King” in Japanese. Vertical shoot em up with title Great King, sounds fantastic, right? Anyone who’s more competent in Japanese may correct my half-competence translation.
The prologue is in attraction
mode so we off to a good start because we know the backstory right away. So,
our protagonist’s plane is about to confront gigantic robot in space who
presumably want to conquer the earth. With “Antagonist want to conquer earth”
and word “scramble”, the game reminds me of the cute shmup Space Bomber.
I have good feeling about this.
Our plane launches from aircraft carrier plane. Planeception! D:
The control is simple yet common. Joystick to move the ship around and 1st button to shoot standard Vulcan gun. So far so generic.
But then if you press 2nd button, your plane will shoot lightning that homing on enemies! Shocking! [Pun intended]
Then if you press 3rd button, your plane will fire slow-moving yet powerful rockets. They’re useful against heavy armored enemies such as this giant tank.
Naturally, there’s a button to release the bomb which is the 4th button. It unleashes array of mushroom cloud that will damage enemies in entire screen.
If you’re already awed with the 3 buttons to fire the ship’s weapon. Then you most likely astounded that there’s also 3 buttons to unleash bomb. The 5th button is for laser bomb which summon pillar of light near the plane. By the way this walker robot is the boss and it’s already destroyed by this laser bomb!
The 2nd stage takes place in desert. That Pharaoh statue looks amused by the destruction that I wrought. He loves explosions and bunch of missiles. Like the game of its peer, Daioh also has power up item that will upgrade your weapon into more powerful form. For instance, the 3rd weapon will unleash more rockets and at certain power level it adds small homing missiles. There’s also yellow eyeball item that serves as score up item. It adds 5,000 points. Usually score up item takes form in medal of honor but yellow cybernetic eye seems off to me.
Now, he looks terrified for the lightning weapon. There’s also blue “S” item that increase your ship’s speed. It may or may not help you on your quest to stop the earth invasion. Faster ship allows you to not only dodge projectiles easier but also ram into projectiles easier. Personally, I prefer speed that I can control manually like in Thunder Force III.
I encounter a giant red robot, punching the wall. You look cool. Can we be friends?
No? We’re fighting then. Such a shame. *sigh*
You may ask why I can’t shoot him earlier. That’s because it’s rude to interrupt him breaking the wall to demonstrate his cool strength. Not because he’s in the middle of scripted event. Yup. No way. [Medium-size Sarcasm]
Somehow, I end up in jungle of machinery and I encounter the big brother of wall-punching robot that I destroyed.
I went through a gate that was a huge face. Now I encounter gigantic machine with 3 human faces. This kind of boss usually reserved for the final boss because how absurd it looks. Luckily, that’s not the case. So, the 2nd boss here is not so tough to defeat.
The strangeness doesn’t stop there. Once I destroy the machine, a massive brain with face emerges! It shoots by throwing copied part of itself at me! Sniper_sf13_magic_reac01.wav
Next stage takes place in archipelago. After that bizarre 2nd boss, I deserve a vacation in relaxing islands. This area is not relaxing but at least there are only normal looking enemies around. I notice there’s circle of Moai. Luckily, this is not Konami’s game otherwise those Moai turn sentient and attack me mentally.
Daioh is pretty relentless vertical shmup game. Thankfully, there’s some checkpoints throughout a level. See the number on the right of the “dash”? It indicates the number part of the level, I’m in. The checkpoint is in the start of the part. The checkpoint system is definitely more generous than just 1 checkpoint in the middle of level. Although I still prefer continuing in the spot where my plane is destroyed. If my plane destroyed, my bomb stock is restored to 3 but decrease my firepower level by 1.
The game decides to release the Kraken for the 3rd level boss! Still not as bizarre as the previous boss. Usually when I fight boss or any tough enemy, I will immediately use the rocket weapon. But I use the lightning weapon for awhile just to destroy the tentacles quicker. The lightning will zap the tentacles and also the Kraken at the same time. Once the tentacles are destroyed, I switch to rocket weapon to finish the boss off.
It seems we clear all the alien invaders within the earth. So, we’re move on to space which has boring background. :(
There’s some occasion where I fly past a space station that’s inhabited by robots. It spices thing a bit.
The boss is this giant sentient thing. Maybe it’s based on scarab. Much like Kraken boss, I destroy the arms first before shooting at the head.
Let’s move on to more important thing. The game has the usual HUD indicator on the corner of the screen. Left for player 1 and right for player 2. My bomb reserve is in the bottom corner. On the top there’s score indicator and the score will reset to zero everytime I use continue. So credit feeding won’t get you high score optimally. Then there’s small triangle icon which indicate how many ships left in your reserve. It’s not intuitive indicator because in other game it should be the miniature of your ship or just “Player 1 = [number]” at least. Lastly there’s “P” icon which indicates my firepower level. But the icon only appears if I have collected a set number of power up. I’m not sure how many power up that it takes to make the ”P” icon appears. My best guess is 2.
Pressing the 6th button will unleash a 3rd type bomb which is giant explosion that’s centered on my plane. It has the smallest area of effect but deal damage the most. So, there’s risk and reward kind of thing.
I’m stuck in this particular part in level 5. Usually, I use rockets to defeat tough enemies and I use lightning to defeat swarm of fragile enemies. But in this par, there’s big group of tough enemies which is too many for my rocket weapon but too tough for my lightning weapon. Fine, I will use bomb preferably the 3rd type. I think.
My reward for getting past that difficult section is facing the sentient red boomerang. It looks boring.
But this fellow looks more interesting and funnier. It’s googly space robot with extendo punch for arms. It doesn’t work well to defeat me but it does well to entertain me.
Then I attack another space station but it’s bigger this time. Also with bigger turrets.
The 5th level boss is the big brother of previous boss. It’s boring design for sure but at least my mental is safe from that boss with horrible faces on 2nd level.
6th level starts with asteroids to destroy with my lightning. I’m happy that this game pay homage to the classic Atari’s 1979 game.
I hit another roadblock. Roadblock shouldn’t be problem for any aircraft but you know what I mean right? I mean tough obstacle. Anyway, these chunky robots are the problem. Several times, I manage to destroy the right robot but the left ones give me fatal problem because his bullet spray is too fast for me to dodge. But if I focused on the left robot, he is still alive and I end up being ganked by both of them. Heavy_jeers05.wav
I decide to destroy the right robot and try to outrun the left robot. He can’t move beyond the catwalk. But there’s another pair of robot at the next catwalk and I;m out of bomb. Heavy_jeers03.wav
Somehow, I manage to pass the tough robots. At the end of the level is this extremely chunky robot. Truth be told, I like the design of this boss than 2 previous bosses. Probably because of his tank tread. Hover jet looks less interesting than tank tread in my opinion.
Stage 7 is solely final boss stage because he’s running out of underling to send at me. Without a doubt, the final boss is the titanic robot in the intro. Remember when I said that the game is generous with checkpoint? Not for the final level, though. If the final boss destroys your ship even once, you will return to the beginning of the level. The absence of checkpoint specifically in the final level is intended to make the final boss fight feels very dramatic and tense which is reasonable. But it feels unfair to me because it forces me to play flawlessly to beat the game. I have to use save state (even more) for this occasion.
I have hard time with his (and everyone’s) bullet spray because it’s too fast and there’s so small gap within it. On the other hand, his giant laser attack here is fairly predictable although when or where he starts shooting the giant laser is quite random. It can hit you even in one of corner of the screen, if the final boss start shooting it not in dead center.
Although the final boss fight is hard and tedious, it becomes easier as his arms destroyed because I diminished his weapon. But since the giant laser comes from his chest, he still can shoot it. So be careful about it.
Finally, the big bad boss is gone and the earth is safe. Thanks to Dai the first pilot and Oh! The second pilot. I thought Daioh refers to the final boss but apparently the title refers to our heroes here. Nice plot twist, I guess. But the main antagonist looks like Great King to me.
As our heroes return to planet earth, we can see the final boss’ head floating and suddenly his eyes glow. The end? I was hoping there’s sequel to this game but there’s none as far as I know. Instead, we got second loop after finishing the game once. I think I’m good now.
Athena’s Daioh (1993) is
quite unique vertical shmup. When the games of its kin settled with 2 buttons,
Daioh requires buttons thrice the amount! As you know that 6-buttons arcade
game usually for Street Fighter 2 and the likes of it. However, the way
to use those six buttons can be narrowed down. If you encounter swarm of small
enemies, use the homing lightning (2nd button). If you encounter bosses or
tough big enemies, use the rockets (3rd button). Therefore, the Vulcan gun
feels like liability. Use 1st bomb (4th button) for general condition. Use 2nd
bomb (5th button) for straight and precise bomb that deals hefty damage. Use 3rd
bomb (6th button) for the most powerful bomb in close range. For those who’s
afraid to exhaust their fingers when playing shmup game, I have good news. This
game has auto-fire function so you can just hold down the shoot button to fire
the weapon continuously. The power up system is very good especially when your Vulcan
and rocket weapon fire additional projectiles. The checkpoint system is
generous and reasonable. But sadly, there’s no checkpoint for the final boss
stage. The story although quite typical, is pretty engaging thanks to the
intimidating and cool final boss. The music is between non-existent and not so
catchy. The sound effect is crisp and fairly good. I should mention the loud voice speech "Daioh!" on title screen. It sounds energetic and powerful.
Daioh’s (1993) main selling points is the 6 action buttons and it’s very interesting to me. I don’t think I ever see other shmup game with that control scheme like that. The closest to that is Treasure’s Radiant Silvergun (1998) albeit no screen-clearing bomb and the game really needs it in my opinion. You don’t need to pick certain weapon type when you already have all of them! The 6 shoot/bomb buttons make the game’s pace more blasting and fun! It’s simple concept that’s brilliant. I can recommend you to play this stupendous game. Nuff said.
