Dahna: Megami Tanjou (English: Dahna: Goddess's Birth) or Dahna is a fairly obscure Sega Genesis video game developed by IGS and released in 1991. It resembles Golden Axe, in that both games are side-scrolling Beat 'em Up set in a Sword and Sorcery fantasy world.
The game tells the tale of two sisters, Regine and Dahna, who were both born with the ability to cast magic. It doesn’t take long for evildoers to recognize their abilities and seek their power. But as Regine was more powerful than Dahna, it was Regine whom the evildoers sought.
On Dahna’s seventh birthday, her parents are killed and Regine is captured as Dahna herself is left to die. Luckily Dahna is found and rescued by a magician named Magh, who adopts her as his daughter and both raised and trained Dahna to be a warrior.
Ten years later, Dahna returns to her home of Horn to find it in flames. An evil sorceress led an attack on Horn and kidnapped Magh, leaving her minions to wipe out any survivors. Dahna is left to fend off hordes of creatures, and then travel the land to rescue Magh and take down the sorceress once and for all.
But who is really the evil sorceress?
The game also features a magic gauge that allows the player to cast different spells that vary according to the magic level.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Wielding a sword, Dahna braves hordes of knights, imps, and mermen.
- Begin with a Finisher: Dahna arrives to the devastation of Horn riding the shoulders of a giant ogre. The ogre proceeds to completely destroy the invaders with his fists and feet and Dahna cannot take damage from enemies while on the ogre’s shoulders. This goes on for a short bit until the sorceress returns and spirits away the ogre, leaving Dahna to continue fighting by herself.
- Bloodier and Gorier: While the game is not violent per se, the enemies the player defeats disappear in a red blur, and the Stage 3 boss, a double-headed, four-armed knight, gushes forth blood when he loses one of his arms or head.
- Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity: Stage 5's last section before the boss involves climbing up a cliff to reach the castle entrance, while avoiding arrows and crumbling platforms.
- Deity of Human Origin: As implied by its name, after the player beats the game, an epilogue text explains that Dahna became famous throughout the land by her heroic deeds, and people began to worship her as if she were a goddess.
- Demonic Possession: After defeating the sorceress in Stage 6, an "evil spirit" leaves her body and becomes the last boss (as an undulating silhouette in the background).
- Distressed Dude: The sorceress captures Dahna's adoptive father and teleports away her ogre/troll/giant companion at the beginning of Stage 1. Rescuing them are the main objectives of Stages 3 and 4, respectively.
- Doomed Hometown: The main setting of Stage 1: Dahna returns to her home village just as the sorceress captures her adoptive father and her army massacres the villagers and burns down the houses.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After being free of possession and reuniting with her sister, Regine goes on to get married and live a quiet and happy life with her husband and three children.
- Evil Counterpart: The second-to-last boss is an amazon like Dahna, only wielding a trident and wearing pink clothes.
- Evil Sorcerer: Being a game of the Sword and Sorcery genre, this is pretty much a given:
- The main villain is a powerful sorceress that captures Dahna's adoptive father in the beginning of the game. She is Dahna's long-lost sister.
- Stage 2 boss is another sorcerer: he can levitate, lift stones with his magic and hurl them at the player, and create copies of himself.
- It Has Only Just Begun: A heroic example for Dahna. After saving Magh and Regine, Dahna spends the rest of her life traveling and fighting evil, while giving aid to the sick and helpless. This, along with her ever-growing abilities, helped to fuel her status as a heroine throughout the land and why the people began to revere her as a goddess.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Dahna is the heroine of the game, a brave warrior with long blond tresses.
- Horizontal Scrolling Shooter: The game briefly becomes this during the first part of Stage 4: the player controls Dahna atop a griffin, which can shoot fireballs at enemies that appear on the right side of the screen.
- Intangibility: Dahna's second magic level allows her to cast an intangibility spell: clouds of blue mist appear on screen and the enemies cannot harm the player.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: Stage 3. It is divided into two segments, plus a boss. In the second section, Dahna ascends a tower, fights a sub-boss, then a large knight with two heads and four arms.
- Load-Bearing Boss: After defeating the last boss, the castle begins to fall apart. Dahna then takes the sorceress with her and the player has to jump over the falling platforms to safety.
- Magic Knight: Dahna's main weapon is a sword. She is also adept at magic and can use different types of spells.
- Mysterious Mist: Dahna's second magic level creates a blue mist around the screen.
- Playing with Fire: The first level of Dahna's magic meter is this: Dahna levitates in the air, six silhouettes surrounded by fire spread in six different directions to attack the enemies. The sorceress, in Stage 6, also attacks with fireballs.
- Sea Monster: A purple octopus-like creature is the boss of Stage 4.
- Spell Levels: Dahna's magic gauge is divided into three levels:
- Level 1: She casts six fiery silhouettes that strike in six different directions.
- Level 2: A blue mist covers the screen, and she cannot be harmed by the enemies.
- Level 3: She summons a rain of fire that cascades down on the enemies.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Dahna’s ogre companion. After she reunites with him at the end of Stage 4, he provides assistance to her during Stage 5 until a bridge collapse causes him to fall into a bottomless pit. That’s the last the ogre is seen during the game, and it’s never revealed if he survives the fall.
