DonPachi is Cave's debut as a shooter developer, released in 1995 with a team that included former Toaplan members. It lays the groundwork for the style the company would later perfect: agile ships, clear power-ups, and a difficulty progression that starts accessible and ends up demanding memory and reflexes. Above all, it's a fundamental historical document: without DonPachi there is no DoDonPachi, and without DoDonPachi the explosion of the dense-bullet genre that defined Japanese shooters over the following two decades is hardly explained.
If you liked this one
