John Romero's Daikatana, better known as simply Daikatana, is a 2000 first-person shooter action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive for Windows. A port to the Nintendo 64 was released the same year by Kemco. 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Released in May 2000, Daikatana received generally negative reviews for its outdated graphics, gameplay, repetitive sound effects, and poor artificial intelligence.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.
Gameplay
Daikatana is composed of 24 levels (18 in the console version) 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 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. Tabs displaying the status of each sidekick are displayed on either side of the player's screen. When a sidekick moves too far away from the player their tab disappears. The player is also able to give the sidekicks commands such as Stay and Follow.
As the player progresses through the game they are able to level various attributes to improve their skills. These attributes are Power, Attack, Speed, Acro and Vitality.
Daikatana has a multiplayer mode which consists of two types of gameplay. Players can fight in a deathmatch style mode or race to collect treasure. In-game text chat is available in multiplayer mode
Plot 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.
Development
Daikatana was conceptualized 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 founded by Romero, Tom Hall, Bob Wright, Mike Wilson, Todd Porter, and Jerry O'Flaherty. Wilson, the CEO, was removed in November 1997, after using $30,000 in company funds to buy a BMW. Wright was removed by Porter and O'Flaherty in May 1998. Over 50 Ion Storm employees left after Wright's removal. Porter and O'Flaherty were fired in 1999, with rumors being that Romero was angry at Porter's interference in Daikatana.
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. Daikatana was part of an initial three-game contract made between Ion Storm and expanding publisher Eidos Interactive; and the third title to be conceived at Ion Storm after Anachronox and what would become Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3. Ion Storm received a $13 million advance from Eidos. The game had a rumored budget of $30 million.
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 could 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.
In 1997, Romero compared Quake seven weapons and 10 monsters across the game with 150 polygons to Daikatana 35 weapons and 16 monsters per episode with 500 polygons. John Carmack stated that a game of that size could not be completed by its December release date. Romero's design document for the game was 400 pages long. Kee Kimbrell, the co-creator of DWANGO, was the lead programmer.
The core concept was to do something different with shooter mechanics several times within the same game. Romero created the basic storyline, and named its protagonist Hiro Miyamoto in honour of Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. The title is written in Japanese kanji, translating roughly to "big sword". The name comes from an item in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by the original members of id Software, which Romero co-founded. During this early period, the team consisted of fifteen people. The music was composed by a team which included Will Loconto. Christian Divine created the character Superfly Johnson, originally named Super Williams in honor of Super Fly and Jim Kelly's character from Enter the Dragon. He was originally of French descent with "his name taken from the few cultural documents left in the apocalyptic future" and his "character arc would be finding out his real identity at the end".
The game was built using the original Quake engine and had a planned release date of December 1997. Romero saw the Quake II demo at E3 1997 and decided to switch to the Quake II engine, but did not receive it until February 1998. A version of Daikatana on the Quake engine was shown at that year's E3 alongside Tomb Raider II "to a muted reception" according to Edge. It was listed at 50% completed by August 1997. This change resulted in many delays when finalizing the engine. The problems with programming the new engine contributed to the game being delayed from its projected 1998 release date. Romero stated prior to release that he would have chosen the Quake II engine to develop the game from the start if given the chance. Romero later ascribed some problems triggered in using the technology as being due to the rivalry manufactured by the company's marketing between them and id Software. Due to the delays, development of the game ran parallel to Anachronox, Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3, and eventually Deus Ex. Both Quake II and Quake III Arena came out before Daikatana.
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. In 1998, lead artist Bryan Pritchard left the company and was replaced by Eric Smith. According to 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. Almost the entire team working on Daikatana left to join Gathering of Developers by 1999. 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. The departures led to the hiring of Stevie Case as level designer and Chris Perna to polish and add to character models. 17 people, one-fifth of Ion Storm's employees, left in early 1999, and Corrinne Yu, director of technology, left for 3D Realms. Only two staff members remained on the game for the entirety of its production.
Problems reached the point that Eidos publishing director John Kavanagh was sent down to sort out problems surrounding its production. 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. Divine attributed the problems to a combination of overly carefree atmosphere, and corporate struggles about company ownership interfering with game production. 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. Wired listed the game 5th on the list of vaporware for 1999. A sequel, using the Unreal Engine 1, was considered.