Dodonpachi easy cheezy 1-ALL

Dodonpachi is a classic bullet hell STG that I played a lot in MAME when I got back into STGs in like 2007 / 2008. I never 1-ALL’d it, meaning I never beat the first loop of the game on one credit. I’ve cleared a lot of other games since so I figured my improved skills would make short work of getting that 1-ALL. It took about six hours of playing to pull it off, with baby Ramona as my trusty co-pilot who mostly slept by my side while I played.

The game gives you a lot of resources in that your bomb stock goes up by one each time you die, so you can have up to six bombs. As long as you use those bombs in tight situations the game is pretty easy. This has always been a problem for me though, I tend to not want to bomb but instead prove to myself that I’m a superplayer that has tremendous dodging abilities. Once I really committed to ’no bomb left behind’ though, the clear came pretty easily.

My score is junk but I’m ok with that. Dodonpachi scoring is based on chaining, meaning when you kill an enemy a timer starts and if you kill another enemy within that timer you get a multiplier and the timer starts over. If you memorize all the enemy placements and time your shooting, you can build up huge chains that lead to huge scores. This is totally not my cup of tea, I don’t want to memorize all that stuff only to have a mistake completely wreck my score.

There are some great players that have put in the time to learn those chains and beat the second loop, which is quite an amazing feat. These videos by Mark_MSX and Jaimers are really impressive. It was fun to learn some of the bullet patterns, but my Dodonpachi journey ends here.