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I've experienced pretty much every type of game there is, and every type of variation. Indeed, I've pretty much experienced the complete history of video games. But there always exists those unknowns which have escaped my survey. Cave/Nihon System Inc. have created such a title, a shooter, only this isn't your ordinary shooter. There's the typical space/alien breed of shooter (Gradius), the cutesy/strange shooter (Parodius), the war-based shooter (1941), etc. And now we have the disco shooter. Yes, you read that correctly. Although I loathe disco with a passion, that's ok because this game is a blast from start to finish.

You begin by selecting which fighter ship you want from three types, Powerful Shot (lock-on, bomb, & roll types), and, finally, one of four selectable speed settings. After that, put on your bellbottoms and polish those dancing shoes because it's away you go to Planet Fever.

As this is an arcade shooter, be prepared to die often. As this is a disco game, be prepared to cringe often. The actual game is stellar, though extremely difficult. Although it's only five stages, you'll be dying often starting from stage 3 onward. To complicate matters, 1-ups are sparse -- I managed to find one, just one(!), during the final stage. How hard is it? ...Hard? Very Hard? No, worse than those. It's set on the seldom encountered You're Finished difficulty setting. Well, that's what I'd imagine anyway. The gameplay is simple enough: fly around shooting everything you see. The key here is to kill enemies as fast as possible in order to collect disco men. "Huh?", you're saying to yourself, "Disco men?" Yup. As you can see in this screenshot, they float around in red spheres. First, they come down towards you and if they should touch the bottom of the screen they'll bounce back up. The more you collect, the bigger your bonus points will be at the end of the stage, considering you didn't lose them by dying or letting one of them escape via the top of the screen which resets your disco men counter. The concept is simple; the accomplishment is another story. Wave upon wave of enemy ship, land mechanism and everything else is thrown at you full force, often filling the screen with a light show that puts the new year's fireworks displays to shame--to SHAME--especially with the latter bosses which will make you invent new swear words.

The graphics are great, especially for a 2D shooter released in 1998. There's plenty of parallax scrolls and effects, and the screen is often brimming with sprites, some of which are rather large. Everything is bright, colorful and flashy, particularly your disco bombs (I'm just guessing as to what they're called). For each different fighter you choose, there's a different type of disco bomb you can use. You can view one of them here. The bosses are massive and have several attachments and components, each of which can be destroyed. As the boss loses health (you can see its health meter at the top of the screen), it changes its attack pattern several times, becoming increasingly difficult. These things are clearly built to do one thing and one thing only: take people's money. But it's this intensity which makes Dangun Feveron so impressive.

You can choose either to play the game for the sake of beating it or try for the best possible score. I've managed to beat the game without dying and fought another boss at the end which couldn't harm my ship but took a long time to destroy completely. (As a sidenote, if you have a spare disco bomb and use it, your invulnerability will be removed, so don't use them!) I didn't understand the text message during the ending since it was all in Japanese. Ah well. My best score is 3,859,759. Beat that.

The music... is disco. I know, I know, it's just wrong, but I must admit that the tight grooves of the first two stages drew me in. Thanks in no small part to T's Music, the soundtrack is more than acceptable. It features dance grooves replete with mock-70's keyboard sounds and funkified guitar riffs (someone please tell me that they didn't just rip the rhythm guitar part from The Doobie Brothers song "Listen to the Music" for the first stage song "Dancing Bomber"). The second stage song, "Hello, Mr. Cyborg", is probably the best song in the game. The latter three stages' music doesn't stack up to the first two but is passable. The sound effects are great and there's this guy who says some of the strangest things. Make it to a boss and hear him go, "Heaven is here inside my soul!" ....Ok. As you collect more and more disco men, he keeps saying more and more stuff: "Can you feel it? ...YESSSS!!!"

I recommend Dangun Feveron to every shooter nut. Even if you've played a thousand shooters, it's still worth it. The company Cave Co., Ltd, by the way, is the company Treasure is trying to emulate with their shooters. With such a lucrative history of shoot-'em-ups such as ESP Ra. De., Don Don Pachi and ESPGALUDA, Cave is a force to be reckoned with. I found Dangun to be ten times more fun to get as high a score as possible in than Ikaruga, which is overrated. I look forward to Cave/Nihon System's future offerings. You should, too.

Cheats (*note* Make sure you have at least one credit, of course.)

---------

Time Attack
Wanna play a brief but intense time attack mode? Simply press A+B+Start at the title screen.

Hidden Fighter
At the title screen, press Down, Up, Right, Left, Up, Down, Left, Right. You'll hear a noise confirming the code was imputted correctly. Your fighter can no longer use disco bombs or Powerful Shots, but you can change between regular shot types at your own volition.

Check out another review for Dangun Feveron at the Coin-Op Museum.
Here is the soundtrack and tracklisting.
Also, check out The Cave of Shooting review (includes three pages of screenshots).
For more info on the company Cave, go here.

- Michael