DAIOH is a verticle shmup developed by Athena. It was published in the US by American Sammy in 1993. It's great fun. The pacing and feel of everything is like something of a mix between Sky Soldiers and Raiden II.
What's cool about this game is it has SIX buttons, lined up like a Street Fighter II cabinet.
Machinegun, Laser, Missile
Firebomb, Mega Beam, Nuclear Bomb
The top three weapons are unlimited, the bottom three are you're different kinds of smart bombs. The machinegun it he standard Raiden type thing that gets a better spread and damage as it's powered up. The Missiles are too, getting homing missile add ons as well and doing heavy damage. You can hold down the machinegun and missile buttons to fire both weapons at once.
The laser is a different beast entirely. It's like the Raiden II purple laser of awesomeness only instead of it being a steady stream, it's visually like what you would see in a Compile shmup. Very long, rapid stream but it tracks towards and around stuff like the Raiden II laser. This makes for awesome mayhem, as instead of shooting tanks at a frantic pace so that too many don't line up, you can wait until there's a huge vertical line and fire one or two blasts of the laser, it will lean sideways and take them all out in one go if it's powered up.
Some of the enemies are effected more or less effiicently by the three different weapons. The Firebomb and Nuclear Bomb are like the starting bombs in Ghost Pilot. The former lets out a spiralling spread of fireballs, while the latter sets up a stationary explosion that remains for a few seconds.
Anyone who's played the also great Gekioh Shooting King would love this game, as Gekioh is in many ways a remake/massive homage to it.
Sadly, DAIOH was never ported to anything.
DAIOH's my favorite vertical shmup ever, just figured I'd mention it.
What's cool about this game is it has SIX buttons, lined up like a Street Fighter II cabinet.
Machinegun, Laser, Missile
Firebomb, Mega Beam, Nuclear Bomb
The top three weapons are unlimited, the bottom three are you're different kinds of smart bombs. The machinegun it he standard Raiden type thing that gets a better spread and damage as it's powered up. The Missiles are too, getting homing missile add ons as well and doing heavy damage. You can hold down the machinegun and missile buttons to fire both weapons at once.
The laser is a different beast entirely. It's like the Raiden II purple laser of awesomeness only instead of it being a steady stream, it's visually like what you would see in a Compile shmup. Very long, rapid stream but it tracks towards and around stuff like the Raiden II laser. This makes for awesome mayhem, as instead of shooting tanks at a frantic pace so that too many don't line up, you can wait until there's a huge vertical line and fire one or two blasts of the laser, it will lean sideways and take them all out in one go if it's powered up.
Some of the enemies are effected more or less effiicently by the three different weapons. The Firebomb and Nuclear Bomb are like the starting bombs in Ghost Pilot. The former lets out a spiralling spread of fireballs, while the latter sets up a stationary explosion that remains for a few seconds.
Anyone who's played the also great Gekioh Shooting King would love this game, as Gekioh is in many ways a remake/massive homage to it.
Sadly, DAIOH was never ported to anything.
DAIOH's my favorite vertical shmup ever, just figured I'd mention it.
