Дайкатана: Путешествие сквозь время и провал игры.

2000 video game

Daikatana is a first person shooter game developed by Ion Storm. It was published by Eidos Interactive for Windows and Kemco for Nintendo 64. Players control a swordsmaster who travels through various time periods using the eponymous Daikatana, a powerful sword tied to the fate of the world. Daikatana was directed by Ion Storm co founder John Romero, a co developer of the influential first person shooters Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), and Quake (1996). Announced in 1997 as Romero's first game after leaving id Software, it underwent a troubled development that saw a change in its engine, release date delays, and the departure of several staff members. The protracted development, combined with promotion that focused on Romero's involvement over the game itself, resulted in negative publicity for Daikatana prior to its release. Released in May 2000, Daikatana received generally negative reviews for its outdated graphics, gameplay, repetitive sound effects, and poor artificial intelligence. It also sold only 40,351 copies, becoming one of the biggest major commercial failures of the video game industry. Due to the negative response, a separate version for the Game Boy Color did not receive a North American release; it was released in Europe and Japan to a more positive reception.

Daikatana is composed of 24 levels (18 in the console versions) divided into four episodes, with a varying number of levels per episode. Each episode represents a different location and time period: Japan in 2455 AD, ancient Greece in 1200 BC, the Dark Ages in Norway in 560 AD, and near future San Francisco in 2030 AD. One element that Daikatana stressed was the important role of Hiro Miyamoto's two sidekicks, Mikiko Ebihara (Bread) and Superfly Johnson. The death of either sidekick resulted in failing the level, and their assistance was required to complete certain puzzles. Due to poor AI implementation, the sidekicks, who were one of the game's selling points, became a focus of criticism.

In feudal Japan, two rival clans, Ebihara and Mishima, are at war. Mishima goes to swordmaster Usagi Miyamoto to craft a weapon to end the conflict: the Daikatana. However, Usagi realizes Mishima's dark desires and gives the Daikatana to Ebihara; Inshiro Ebihara throws the sword into a volcano at the end of the war. In 2455 AD, swordmaster Hiro Miyamoto is visited by a man named Dr. Toshiro Ebihara, a descendant of Inshiro who is suffering from a plague and about to die. Toshiro tells Hiro that Kage Mishima, the ruler of the planet, took over the world by stealing the Daikatana and using it to alter history. In 2030, he stole the cure to a viral plague and uses the cure to control the world's population. Mikiko Ebihara (Toshiro's daughter) has been captured while trying to steal back the Daikatana, and Hiro must rescue her and fix history. Hiro storms Mishima's headquarters where he rescues Mikiko as well as Superfly Johnson (Mishima's head of security) who rebelled when he grew sick of Mishima's brutal totalitarian practices. Mikiko and Superfly join Hiro in his quest and steal the Daikatana. Mishima encounters the trio as they steal the sword, wielding a second Daikatana. Mishima sends the trio back in time to Ancient Greece. Hiro and Mikiko defeat Medusa, recharging the Daikatana as it absorbs Medusa's power. The three time jump once more, only to encounter Mishima again and be sent through time to the Dark Ages, stranded as the Daikatana has run out of energy. The group finds a sorcerer named Musilde who offers to recharge the Daikatana if Hiro, Superfly, and Mikiko can save his village from the black plague. To do this, the group must defeat the necromancer Nharre, reassemble a holy sword called the Purifier, and use it to restore King Gharroth's sanity so that he may use the sword to end the plague. When King Gharroth recharges the Daikatana, Hiro and his allies time jump again to the year 2030. San Francisco has fallen to gangs and martial law has been declared by the military and Mishima. The trio fights their way through a naval base where the Mishima is working on weapons. The ghost of Usagi enters Hiro's body and gives him full control over the Daikatana. With Usagi's knowledge and sword skills, Hiro slays Mishima. One of the Daikatana disappears, as its timeline no longer exists. Mikiko steals the remaining Daikatana and kills Superfly, revealing that the feudal Ebihara clan was just as evil as the Mishima clan. She announces her intentions to use the Daikatana to restore the honor of her ancient clan and take over the world. Hiro defeats and kills Mikiko, then uses the Daikatana to fix history once and for all. The altered timeline concludes: the Daikatana is never found in 2455, the viral plague is cured in 2030, the Mishima clan never takes over the world, and Hiro exiles himself to a forgotten corner of the space time continuum, safeguarding the Daikatana to ensure that it never falls into evil hands.

Daikatana was created by John Romero, an influential developer whose résumé included founding titles in the first person shooter genre (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake) when he worked at id Software. The game was developed by Ion Storm, a company co founded by Romero with Tom Hall in 1995 after the two left id Software. The aim was for the company to create games that catered to their creative tastes without excessive publisher interference, which had constrained both Romero and Hall too much in the past. The two main influences for Daikatana were Chrono Trigger and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, of which Romero was a fan. He implemented the sidekick feature from the former and the mighty sword from the latter. For the sidekicks, Romero wanted Mikiko and Superfly to do everything the player does in the game. Using 2001's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon as another reference, he wanted the sidekicks to do more than what the AI squads can do like jumping, running, fighting and solving puzzles (the AI squads are locked to the ground and cannot jump). Romero later regretted this decision as he found out that programming this feature was very difficult because the sidekicks ended up being buggy and unresponsive. The game was built using the original Quake game engine; according to an early interview, Romero planned Daikatana to have unique weapon sets and 16 monsters per time period. The core concept was to do something different with shooter mechanics several times within the same game. The music was composed by a team which included Will Loconto. However, during its earlier production, the team saw the Quake II engine and decided to incorporate its code. This resulted in many delays when finalising the engine. The problems with programming the new engine contributed to the game being delayed from its projected 1998 release date. Due to the delays, development of the game ran parallel to Anachronox, Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3, and eventually Deus Ex. Something that further impacted production was the departure of around twenty staff members from the team, who either left Ion Storm or transferred to the Austin studio. According to staff member Christian Divine, the growing negative press surrounding the company had a further detrimental effect on development. Some of the backlash eventually led to his own departure for Ion Storm's Austin studio to work on Deus Ex. The most notorious incident was the public resignation of nine core team members at once, something Romero understood given the low team morale but felt as a betrayal of trust. In a 1999 interview, Romero attributed the slowing of development during that period to the staff departures, but said that most of the level design and the entire score had been completed before that. In a later interview, Romero admitted there were many faults with the game at release, blaming the development culture and management clashes at Ion Storm, in addition to staff departures causing much of the work to be scrapped and begun over again. Public, journalistic and commercial confidence in the project was weakened by the repeated delays to its release date. In a 2008 blog post, Romero attributed the marketing tactic to Wilson, prompting a hostile exchange of public messages between the two. Daikatana was demoed at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo. The demo ran at a very low frame rate, which further damaged the game's public image. Staff member Jake Hughes remembered that Romero wanted changes made which crippled the demo tech and caused the issues, while Romero states that he had already departed for E3 and the upper management insisted on the changes when he was gone. A tie in comic book was drawn by Marc Silvestri and released by Top Cow for Prima Games' Daikatana: Prima's Official Strategy Guide. The Nintendo 64 version was first released as a Blockbuster rental exclusive by Kemco in August 2000. It was later released for retail on November 26, 2000. Daikatana final patch, version 1.2, was released on September 29, 2000. Following the release of Daikatana and Anachronox, Ion Storm Austin decided to close the Dallas branch office in July 2001.

Before Daikatanas release, reports indicated that Ion Storm forecast sales of 2.5 million units, a number that GameDaily called necessary for the game "to become profitable". According to American market research company PC Data, a week after its release, the game ranked number ten on their charts from the week of May 28 to June 3. The computer version of Daikatana sold 8,190 copies in the United States by July 21, which drew revenues of $271,982. Mark Asher of CNET Gamecenter called this performance "a disaster". According to PC Data, the game's domestic sales reached 40,351 units through September 2000.

Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PC version of the game for Next Generation, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "This isn't the worst game you'll ever play, but there's precious little fun either. Two years out of its time, Daikatana is notable mostly for its mediocrity." The Nintendo 64 version received "unfavorable" reviews, according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. Computer Gaming World named it the worst game of 2000.

The Game Boy Color version of Daikatana was released in Europe and Japan; publisher Kemco decided against the North American release due to the poor reputation of the Daikatana brand. The Japanese version was also only made available as a download for the Nintendo Power peripheral. This version's gameplay differs greatly from the N64 and PC versions: at Romero's request, the title was adapted to the platform as a top down dungeon crawler, in the style of early Zelda games such as the NES original and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. In 2004, Romero released the ROM images for the Game Boy Color game on his website, for use with emulators. Frank Provo for GameSpot gave the game a seven out of ten.