Arcade Archives: Dacholer

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Dacholer (Nichibutsu, 1983)

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Switch
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No Arcade Archives 2 version for this, so it's just on PS4 and Switch. Both the earlier ostrich version (Dacholer) and the later human version (Kick Boy) with several gameplay changes (in particular, Dacholer will kill you if you run into a ball you just kicked that still has momentum, whereas Kick Boy will instead kick the ball again, and both have unique bonus stages). No Preference Settings either, but this does fix a huge oversight present in MAME for years, where the game's default lives setting was 1 instead of the correct 3, so you can play on the default settings for more than a minute now! Oddly, this uses the old ACA UI- I can only speculate, but maybe this is a holdover from before the ACA2 UI change that they've been holding onto for a rainy day? Who knows.

Finally, it is time for OSTRICH GAMING. Nichibutsu is back on the menu with the bizarre Dacholer, alongside the later Kick Boy retooling. This is a weird top-down maze-chase of sorts, but without the maze- as the heroic ostrich DACHOLER (I'm assuming), you have to kick the turtles that turn into what look like footballs when you get close to them to take out the other animals that want you dead, including giant mice, rabbits and gorillas, while grabbing worms and other delicious food for extra points along the way. If you're quick, you can get rid of the animals before they spawn from their fried-egg hatching spots (well, they look like fried eggs to me) at the start of a scene! Be careful though, the kappa (referred to on the flyer as the WATER SPIRIT) will kill you if you try to cross the bridge when they're jumping across, and moles will dig killer holes you'll have to avoid. Survive all four scenes and you get a bonus round where you can pick up loads of fried eggs (although in Kick Boy, you just kick balls into goals)! Arcade games are weird!!

It's an awkward game for sure- there's no maze but your ostrich definitely moves on a 'grid' plus there's no diagonal movement which can make manoeuvering around enemies and hitting the ball difficult, and you have to be very careful where you kick the ball, as if it rebounds off something or another ball, it will come back to kill you. Still, it's weirdly charming, and once you get used to the controls you can sort-of get into it, and I can't say no to a game where you play as a silly ostrich. Now, the other revision, Kick Boy, is certainly a bit more forgiving, in that kicked footballs no longer kill you and the kappa's replaced with a non-lethal ship, but the way the football bounces around all over the place once you walk into it is a bit much and, well, you're not an ostrich. Still, you can pick either version here, which is a nice inclusion, so you can decide which is better!

In any case, the most important thing about Dacholer is this flyer, taken from The Arcade Flyer Archive:

 

This is true art.