Daisenpuu

 

Daisenpuu - PC Engine (1990)

Developed by Toaplan/Center Tech

Published by NEC Avenue

One of the less popular vertical shooters from famed STG developer Toaplan, Daisenpuu (known as Twin Hawk in the west in arcades and on the Sega Genesis) was ported to the PC Engine and published by NEC Avenue in 1990. The game features a World War II styled setting in which the player flies a fighter plane attacking an enemy military force that seems to only consist of ground based units. As such the player spends the entire game battling with tanks, turrets, boats and other land/sea based enemy vehicles. The pace of this game is slow and methodical and places some emphasis on learning enemy placements and best positioning yourself to take out enemies as soon as they enter the screen. The scoring seems to be simply based on the number of enemies taken out and extends are earned at certain scoring milestones.

The stand out feature that sets this title apart from many others in the genre is the helper system in which the player can summon a group of ally aircraft to help you out in battle. When these planes get shot down they will fly towards enemies and try to take them out as they crash as well. Alternatively the player can press the summon button twice rapidly in order to use a standard semi-screen clearing mega bomb that is popular in so many other STGs instead of summoning allies. Players battle enemies through 4 fairly lengthy areas that are seamless in transition apart from the music changing to a new track.

While ally planes are summoned the enemies still primarily aim their attacks at you. One strategy that simplifies pretty large chunks of the game is to act as somewhat of a diversion and lead enemy shots away from your allies in order to keep them alive for longer allowing them to take out many enemies along the way. While most of the game is pretty straightforward, especially if you use this strategy, there were a few areas of the game that kept tripping me up. In particular the sections with the large boats and the final "boss" vehicle gave me more trouble than they probably should have. However after taking some notes and really thinking out a good strategy it only took me a couple of additional runs to conquer these sections.

Upon clearing, the game loops infinitely. However my main goal for this title was to clear a single loop on a single credit on the Normal difficulty. On my best run I managed to get to the 2nd area of the 2nd loop before using up my first credit with a score of 647400. As a Toaplan fan I have set a personal goal for myself to try and clear more Toaplan titles this year and I eventually plan to check out the other versions of this title as well. While it may not be as exciting as some of the other titles from this developer I would say it is still worth checking out as it is a well designed game overall.

My final score.