Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku-tachi

HISTORY

Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi (ケツイ ～絆地獄たち～) is a 2003 vertical shoot 'em up arcade game by Cave, released in Japanese arcades. A Nintendo DS boss rush version was released in October 2008 in Japan. It included a Superplay DVD featuring a world record scoring run by a top ranked player. The arcade game was ported to the Xbox 360 and released in 2010. A special version of Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label was released on the Xbox 360 in 2011, which is a crossover with Ketsui, featuring the ship, re-arranged music and scoring system from Ketsui on top of the Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label scoring system.

Gameplay

Scoring

Ketsui's scoring system centers around numbered "chips" that are dropped from defeated enemies. Each chip bears a number from 1 to 5, signifying their value, which gets added to the player's accumulated total of chip points when collected. The value of a chip is dependent on the player's proximity to the enemy when it is destroyed using the player's normal shots. For example, destroying an enemy from far away will yield lower-value chips (such as 1s and 2s) while destroying enemies at close range will yield higher-value chips (such as 4s and 5s). When a chip whose value is higher than 1 is obtained, a counter will appear in the upper-left of the screen and quickly count down from 60 to 0. While this counter is above zero, every enemy destroyed with the player's lock-on shots will drop chips with the same value as the chip collected that was higher than 1, regardless of proximity. For example, if the player destroys an enemy at point-blank with their normal shots and receives a 5-value chip, then quickly switches to their lock-on shots, every enemy destroyed will yield 5-valued chips, regardless of proximity and so long as the counter stays above 0. When the counter hits 0, every enemy destroyed with lock-on shots will only yield 1-valued chips, though the player can keep replenishing the counter by quickly collecting more chips that are valued higher than 1.

While using the lock-on shot, however, the player will lose a small number of their accumulated chip points per enemy defeated, forcing the player to balance between normal and lock-on shots in order to obtain the highest number of accumulated chips possible per stage. At the end of each stage when the player faces the boss, the player's total number of chips will slowly deplete throughout the duration of the boss battle. The number of chips remaining at the end of the boss battle will act as a multiplier and greatly increase the player's end-of-level score, thus defeating the boss quickly will yield a higher multiplier.

Fighters

AH-Y72 Tiger Schwert: Fires in wide formation, slow movement, fast lock-on, Lloyd Evansmann and Alice Blackbarn.

FH-X4 Panzer Jäger: Fires in straight formation, fast movement, slow lock-on, Steele Yurek and Yuma Nanase.

Stages

1. Noisy Town - INTERCEPTION

A fortified city under EVAC's direct control. A pedestrian bridge, state-of-the-art skyscrapers, a stadium with a large baseball field and even an indoor sky slope, but the roads and structures are littered with enemy aircraft and artillery emplacements, hidden and ready to strike.

Sub-Boss: Medium-sized and pontoon-equipped helicopter Sea Horse

Boss: "Air superiority" large combat helicopter Bullfrog

2. Armored Green - SUBURB

A forward operating base hidden deep in the forest surrounding the city. This is where every model of tank at EVAC's disposal is first encountered.

Sub-Boss: Large connected tanks Gem & Ini

Boss: Multi-tracks battle tank XM-117 Sphynx

3. Twilight Fleet - CANAL FLEET

An EVAC naval base where much of its fleet are harbored, some ships being well armed, particularly one huge battleship.

Sub-Boss: Multi-purpose, SRBM equipped warship RBB-S1 Vinogradov

Boss: V/STOL transport and attack craft Jamadhar

4. Lurk in the Darkness - DEFENSIVE LINE

A valley and rocky path is in the way towards EVAC's Headquarters, but unknown to the pilots, the old staging and testing area has been extensively retrofitted and fortified in an attempt to stop their advance.

Sub-Boss: Base security enforcer Black Draft

Boss: Experimental modular vehicle Cinderella Amber

5. Day of Judgement - EVAC INDUSTRY

EVAC's vast weapons development facility, an extensive and technologically advanced complex which houses the true heart of the corrupt corporation. After descending to the lowest level and fighting through Hell, the vertigo of the final battle awaits. Most notably, apart from the reappearance of every weaker enemy in an upgraded form, the player has to challenge the production models of their own attack craft: Ketsui Death Label clarifies that those "A" models are still inferior to the prototypes available to the players, lacking modifications performed on them by Alice Blackbarn, but are better armored.

Sub-Boss: Tracks-mounted heavy anti-aircraft cannon "Defensive Tower Trafalgar"

Boss: Heavy mobile combat fortress Evaccaneer (prototype - still in development)

Continuing with Cave's long-standing tradition, more skilled players can enter a second round of the game, consisting of the same stages with noticeably increased difficulty. There are two sets of conditions:

Omote/Tsuujou Loop: If the player has used no continues, and the Sum of lives lost and bombs used is 6 or less, the player will qualify. In this mode, the scrolling direction is inverted, and all enemies release pink "suicide bullets" unless destroyed at very close range. The player cannot reach the Evaccanneer DOOM (the True Last Boss).

Ura Loop: If the first loop is cleared with a score of over 120,000,000 points with no deaths and no bombs deployed, the WELCOME TO SPECIAL ROUND message is displayed and the Ura game begins. In this mode, all enemies fire approximately double the number of shots, and release blue suicide bullets unless destroyed at close range. After destroying Evaccaneer again, the player is forced to challenge the game's TLB, Evaccaneer DOOM. This battle has a hidden time limit of 180 seconds (3 minutes), and the player cannot use continues during the battle, which means if the player loses all lives during the DOOM fight, the game will be over.

Plot

In the year 2054, chaos spreads over the globe as global warming finally exacts its toll on Earth: the ice caps quickly melt, causing a tremendous series of cataclysms and for entire nations to disappear under the sea. The near apocalyptic setting and the quickly depleting resources of the remaining dry lands force nations into constant war, eventually culminating into World War III; all efforts by the United Nations to cease hostilities are thwarted by a seemingly endless supply of technologically advanced weaponry being sold to each side of every conflict. After investigation, the source is tracked back to EVAC Industry co. ltd, an arms dealer who's been reaping tremendously high profits from the situation, at times directly intervening to fuel the hostilities with utter disregard towards human lives; any attempt to negotiate with the board of directors has utterly failed, the earnings having proven high enough for the company to build its own cities, shipyards, defensive emplacements and even a private airport, to the point of assembling its own army of extremely well equipped mercenary troops.

Being unable to enter the fray officially, the UN sets up a strike team of four pilots, each pair given one of two advanced helicopters: the plan is to simulate a rebellion within EVAC forces and bring down the company's headquarters, where research on a series of tremendous warmachines is taking place; for this reason, the planes both bear EVAC insignia and callsigns and are built according to stolen prototype blueprints - by no means, in success or failure, must the operation be traced back to the United Nations.

For all this secrecy to be effective, even in victories the assault choppers will have to be destroyed and the pilots killed, but to compensate for their sacrifice, the UN shall fulfill one of their wishes, no matter what it is.

Later releases

Arika, developer of the PlayStation 2 ports for DoDonPachi DaiOuJou and Espgaluda, had expressed interest in porting Ketsui to the PlayStation 2 as well, but they claimed that the console was insufficient for achieving the arcade-perfect quality they sought. Specifically, the second half of stage 5 employs a quick swap of the entire background plane, coupled with reversing the overall scrolling direction ("tate-ana"). Arika claimed that this was unachievable with the standard amount of RAM and processing power of the PlayStation 2.…

STORY

In the year 2054, chaos spreads over the globe as global warming finally exacts its toll on Earth: the ice caps quickly melt, causing a tremendous series of cataclysms and for entire nations to disappear under the sea. The near apocalyptic setting and the quickly depleting resources of the remaining dry lands force nations into constant war, eventually culminating into World War III; all efforts by the United Nations to cease hostilities are thwarted by a seemingly endless supply of technologically advanced weaponry being sold to each side of every conflict. After investigation, the source is tracked back to EVAC Industry co. ltd, an arms dealer who's been reaping tremendously high profits from the situation, at times directly intervening to fuel the hostilities with utter disregard towards human lives; any attempt to negotiate with the board of directors has utterly failed, the earnings having proven high enough for the company to build its own cities, shipyards, defensive emplacements and even a private airport, to the point of assembling its own army of extremely well equipped mercenary troops.

Being unable to enter the fray officially, the UN sets up a strike team of four pilots, each pair given one of two advanced helicopters: the plan is to simulate a rebellion within EVAC forces and bring down the company's headquarters, where research on a series of tremendous warmachines is taking place; for this reason, the planes both bear EVAC insignia and callsigns and are built according to stolen prototype blueprints - by no means, in success or failure, must the operation be traced back to the United Nations. However, for all this secrecy to be effective, even in victories the assault choppers will have to be destroyed... and the pilots killed. However, to compensate for their sacrifice, the UN shall fulfill one of their wishes, no matter what it is. And this, on board a stolen EVAC carrier plane, is how the story begins...

IN PRINT

Cave Shooting Artworks 2011