Lost In Translation/DonPachi

About The Game
DonPachi is a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up arcade video game.

Trivia
Chief Hornet (literally), 'DonPachi' is also Japanese onomatopoiea for the firing of guns...

This is the first Cave game.

The plot of this game is quite 'cheesy' : you fight your own comrades in order to become the ultimate fighter, the 'DonPachi elite team!'.

Kenichi Takano and Tsuneki Ikeda (see Staff section) were ex-Toaplan employers. It seems that Tsuneki Ikeda was one of the programmers behind "Truxton", hence the red/blue/green ships colour (for player1 of course :). He should also be the 'Ikeda in Maeba' guy appearing in Batsugun's credits.

Note : read vertically, the highscore table says 'TOAPLAN FOR EVER'.

At the second loop all targets destroyed releases bullets towards your ship.

The 'Engrish' text that appears against the 'WARNING' message upon approaching a boss reads : THIS IS NOT SIMILATION. GET READY TO DESTOROY THE ENEMY. TARGET FOR THE WEAK POINTS OF F**KIN' MACHINE. DO YOUR BEST YOU HAVE EVER DONE.

Updates
The US version is slightly different, it has the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen.

Bee Medals
There are 13 bee medals hidden in each stage. If you cross the location of a hidden bee medal with your bullets or your laser, it starts to blink. Only the head of the laser weapon frees it, so you can capture it after.
 * 1st medal is worth 100 points, 2nd medal 200, 3rd 400, then 800, 1000, 2000...
 * If you miss a medal, the chain breaks and counting restarts. In case you manage to collect all bee medals of a stage, the 13th medal increases it's value stage by stage up to 1'000'000 points.

Hits
If you destroy multiple targets within an very short time range (indicated by a green colored bar), a hit counter starts and after 10 hits it will be visible in large letters. Once your hits are too slow, the counter stops and disappears.

Series

 * 1) DonPachi (1995)
 * 2) DoDonPachi (1997)
 * 3) Bee Storm - DoDonPachi II (2001)
 * 4) DoDonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou (2002)

Staff

 * Producer:
 * Kenichi Takano


 * Programmers:
 * Tsuneki Ikeda
 * Toshiaki Tomizawa
 * H. Uchida
 * Ryuichi Yabuki


 * Graphic Designers:
 * A. Aburatani
 * K. Asaba
 * J. Fujisaku
 * R. Nitta
 * Naoki Ogihara


 * Sound:
 * Ryuichi Yabuki

Ports

 * Consoles :
 * Sony PlayStation (1996)
 * Sega Saturn (1996)