"Concentrate Kid!" and "Keep your eyes on the trigger!", these are two of many sound samples you hear when you first play DonPachi, a shooting game from the year 1995. It was Cave's first released shooting game, and it has a strange name (it means "BeeBoss").

The first thing one experiences when playing the game are the massive waves of opponents that attack, and lots of bullets. But after seeing the Game Over screen for a couple of times you'll get accustomed to the games wonderful graphics and challenging grade of severity this game offers.

You are greeted by a nice looking title screen, after inserting the first coin there are three different ships you can choose from. All three offer different kinds of weapons but they also have one thing in common. When you push the 'A'-Button continously the two satellites (all three ships have them) focus in front of you and your, normally spread, shot transforms into a massive, powerful lasershot. The only bad thing about this nice little firecracker is that the energy consumed in the process slows your ship down. Otherwise, the ships have different kinds of smart bombs (though it looks, as if graphics only are different). The normal shot is a little different with every ship and just varies in its spread and power.

Once you choose one of the ships (there is a red one, a blue one and a green one looking like a helicopter) the action begins. You are being released from your carriership right into the core of the enemy. Wave after wave of hostile ships try to destroy your lone fighter.

The ships attacking you are wonderfully designed with many details. And, as I said before, the severity is very high, you have to use your smart bomb quite often to escape sudden death. You can also use the smart bomb in two ways: Normally you just push the 'B'-Button for the smart bomb, which will make all enemy shots disappear and destroy most of your adversaries.

However, when you use the smart bomb while shooting with your focused laser your shot will get even more intensive, destroying almost anything in its wake. This is a great way of concentrating your firepower, especially against big crafts. The only drawback is that you won't be able to hit all on-screen way. Another way of strengthening your chances of survival is to collect the many "Power Up" items you get after destroying enemy ships. Your shot will become stronger and wider spread, as your focused shot will too.

There is a total of five different stages. Graphics of each one of them are wonderfully designed but also all look very much alike. There's a big boss waiting for you at the end of each stage. A monitor appears which shows you the weak points of the boss. The bosses are metallic-looking screen filling ships, and all of them are pretty hard to beat. Sound surely is pretty good, but with my version of RAINE it was pretty buggy, as were the sound samples from your co-pilot.

In total, to beat the game you have to pass through ten stages. Yes, you read that right: ten. After finishing the five different ones you'll see a nice sequence with some badly translated sentences. At least to me, they don't make much sense, but it seems as if you, the pilot, are talking about this senseless war you are fighting in. After the sequence you'll start off again in stage one (now entitled stage SIX). On the screen it is written that five years have passed since your last fight. The stages are pretty much the same as before, only even harder to beat.

Now, after having completed those five stages too you get to the final boss, the DonPachi. After beating him you can the end screen, which is not much to look at. Its a again some kind of monitor on which you see your ship and some other scenes and some more comments from yourself about the end of the war. After that some of your allied ships fly around the screen in a victory parade and of course you get some big, earned, CONGRATULATIONS.