John Romero's Daikatana

John Romero's Daikatana is a video game that consists of 0 releases

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In the dystopian future of 2455 AD, a martial arts instructor must travel through time to recover the magical sword - Daikatana....

Introduction

John Romero's Daikatana is a Science Fiction first person shooter that is infamous for being a critical and commerical flop. It was released on April 14th 2000, developed by the Dallas Ion Storm branch and published by Eidos Interactive.

Story

Daikatana begins in the year 2455 AD where the world is run by corporations - the most powerful owned by the ruthless Kage Mishima. The opening sequence depicts a young, martial arts sensei named Hiro Miyamoto practising late one night in his dojo. A sick, old man named Toshiro Ebihara appears on the dojo's doorsteps claiming to be a descendent of a group of skilled warriors known as the Ebihara Clan. He explains that centuries ago the Mishima's were a powerful clan that ruled with an iron fist and bloody sword that only the Ebihara clan would dare oppose. In response to this the Mishima clan employed the services of a legendary swordsmith, an ancestor of Hiro. The swordsmith crafted a sword so powerful, it had the ability to manipulate time. The blade was named the Daikatana and through the blade, the swordsmith saw the evil in the world if it ever fell into the hands of the Mishima clan. Instead, the swordsmith offers the Daikatana to the Ebihara clan and in doing so, they decimate the mishima tyranny. Seeing how dangerous the sword was, the swordsmith threw the Daikatana into the centre of a volcano.

Toshiro then goes onto explain that in his youth he was wealthy and funded an expedition to the volcano to recover the Daikatana, but after Kage Mishima learns of this he stole the Daikatana and used it's power to travel back in time to make his clan powerful once again. Toshiro also claims that Kage Mishima is responsible for the 'MMP' virus that plagues the world and keeps the population under his control, as only he owns the vaccine. Hiro, unsure where he fits into all of this is then asked by Toshiro to recover his daughter, who has been training all her life to use the Daikatana and has recently become captured by Kage Mishima. As Hiro is about to decline, assassins suddenly appear taking the two men by suprise. Hiro is knocked unconscious and Toshiro is mortally wounded.

When Hiro awakes, Toshiro is on the verge of death. He convinces Hiro to attempt to save his daughter and Hiro, hiding inside a coffin carried by a Mishima truck, begins his quest.

Gameplay
Daikatana is primarily an action game in the style of John Romero's previous work on titles such as Doom and Quake. The focus of the setting is based around travelling through time from futuristic Japan, ancient Greece, The Dark Ages and futuristic San Francisco. An attempt was made at improving on the traditional formula by Hiro having two 'sidekicks' - SuperFly Johnson and Mikiko Ebihara. One of the main points of criticism aimed at the game was the poor sidekick AI who, for example, frequently got themselves killed in a fight resulting in mission failure.

History:

Daikatana is what John Romero originally wanted Quake 1 to be in concept. John wanted Quake to be a first person action RPG and the rest of ID wanted it to be a sci fi gothic first person shooter.

Romero originally completed his design concept for Daikatana in march of 2007. The design document that he had come up with called for a large amount of content. Included in this document were details for 24 levels, 12 weapons and 64 types of monsters.

Despite this utterly huge undertaking Romero remained convinced that development for the game could be completed within the frame of 7 months, in time for christmas of 1997. Romero's currently growing company ion storm had licenced the already established Quake 1 engine to power the game.

Id software had completed content development for Quake in the frame of 6 months with 9 artists. John Romero figured that given these numbers , he could complete the same amount of work on Daikatana in the period of 7 months with 8 artists.

This shedule was quoted by john carmack as being "Patently Ludicrous". The truth of the matter was that Romero didnt have enough of a established, experienced team to handle the project. At the time that all of this was going on, Ion storm was still being built as a company hiring in new staff, many of which were not much more than "talented amatures" hired on the basis of level designs they had created.

Ion Storm first showed Daikatana at E3 1997 and was still running in software mode which made it look underwhelming at the time compared to Id software's recently unveiled Quake 2.

Romero's team made plans to licence the new Quake 2 engine to stay ahead but the switch forced them to scrap 11 months worth of development.

In January 1999 Daikatana's code base completed its switch to the Quake 2 engine. The switch had been scheduled to only take weeks, instead taking an entire year.

Although plans had been made to have the game done by Febuary of 1999, they missed thier deadline and were forced to push the game back further. A demo of the game was released but it underwhelmed alot of players due to the fact that it only included multiplayer death match. Ion storm tried to make up for the demo's disapointment by trying to make a more impressive demo for that years E3. Unfortunatly, last minute changes to the games code and other issues had the game running at a less than impressive 12 frames per second. At this time Eidos became fed up with the project, given that it had funded the game by $25 million at that point in time. In June 1999 Ion Storm and Eidos came to an agreement which resulted in Eidos recieving majority ownership of the company. c

The game was eventually released on April 14 2000.

General Information Edit

Game Name	John Romero's Daikatana
Platform(s)	Nintendo 64 PC
Publisher(s)	Sold Out Sales & Marketing Ltd. Eidos Interactive Kemco
Developer(s)	Kemco Ion Storm Inc.
Genres	Add a new genre Action Shooter First-Person Shooter
Themes	Add a new theme Martial Arts
Original US Release	April 14, 2000 need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release	know the real date?
Aliases