DoDonPachi is one of the longest-running shoot-em-up franchises in Japan, with its first iteration, DonPachi, establishing itself in arcades all the way back in 1995.
DoDonPachi Resurrection is developer Cave's first mobile release for the franchise, and offers both an optimised iPhone mode and a straight-up port of the arcade version – though the difference between the two is fairly negligible.
In a format that will be instantly familiar to most, you pilot a small, laser-toting fighter ship over a landscape packed to the nines with enemies, projectiles, power-ups and score notifiers.
Your vessel – available in three different varieties – constantly fires, so all you need to worry about is navigation. Bombs, a "hyper cannon" and the game's "slaughter menace" mode (which changes your ship depending on your style of play) offer some variety but, handily for a mobile release, your input is pretty basic.
Inifinite continues means DoDonPachi is pretty forgiving, though the difficulty level if you do attempt to avoid damage is incredibly high.
The game falls in to the niche shmup subcategory of "bullet hell", where the screen is almost constantly more than three-quarters full of moving sprites (often with noticeable lag): you'll probably need a lie down after any extended period of play.
Meanwhile, the game's Japanese idiosyncrasies charm and annoy in equal measure. The strangely translated instructions fail to give you any real idea of how to play – for example, you're told "scrape" your ship against bullets to power-up the 'menace bar' – I'm still not too sure what this means.
At the same time there's something weird and wonderful about some of the Parodius-like strangeness to be found. The first end-of-level boss turns into a mechanised schoolgirl before exploding, for example.
Sadly this oddball charm and the game's frenetic action can't hide that fact that, on a small screen, there's simply far too much going on for the game to be remotely playable.
It's rare a game makes me feel old, but the difficulty I had working out what was happening most of the time made for a completely bewildering experience.
The fact that your fingers cover part of the playing field as you swipe to move your ship around only makes things worse. At least now I know how my Gran felt when I forced her to play GoldenEye with me.
OpenFeint compatibility, polished graphics and controls and the niche appeal of such a title means it will probably please many hardcore shmup fans. Sadly, this reviewer just wasn't hardcore enough.
