Denjin Makai is a Beat 'em Up Arcade Game created by WinkySoft and published by Banpresto (famous for its Super Robot Wars series) in February 1st, 1994. It was innovative for its time by including for each one of the six player characters an extended moveset (including team-up attacks) and by relegating special and crowd control moves to a special bar, much like a Fighting Game. A port titled Ghost Chaser Densei was released in September 23, 1994 for the Super Famicom. A Fan Translation of the latter was released in May 15, 2017. The original game was followed in 1995 by Guardians (1995) (also known as Denjin Makai II).
In A.D. 2079, in the Far East exists a city-state known as the Total Control Central Nation, controlled by a Central Command that observes, monitors, and rules everything in the entire city-state, because of this, crime is non-existent...or so it was thought. A mysterious group of criminals known as "Ghosts" have infiltrated the once-perfect city-state, evading the omnipresent detection through unknown means with an unknown agenda. In this situation, the human administrators of the city have assembled a special task force to deal with the criminals, known only as "Ghost Chasers":
- Makai: The protagonist of this game. Can do a Hurricane Kick and set his opponents in fire with many of his attacks.
- Iyo: An agile Monkey Girl armed with a extendable spiked mace.
- Belva: A robot who can glide with its boots and shock its enemies.
- Kurokishi: A policewoman who attacks with her legs. Also the Ms. Fanservice in both arcade games.
- Tulks: A muscled wrestler in a Cyberpunk setting!.
- Zeldia: An extremely strong beast capable of spitting fire and shoot needles. Also, is ''a girl''.
Gentlemen, your next mission. Describe these tropes:
- Anti-Frustration Features: If you lose your only life and you continue, you won't lose your life/power upgrades described below.
- Blocking Stops All Damage: A rare example for a Beat'em up, but there're some attacks that are unblockable.
- Cast from Hit Points: Averted, the special moves that you can perform drain the Power Meter instead, and you can recharge it by standing still, the character will recharge his/her special bar Dragon Ball-style. You will regain some Power Meter automatically by getting up after being knocked down.
- Combination Attack: If there're two players they have access to two of these, and every possible pair has their own set of combination attacks.
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Nintendo Hard: Despite the moveset and the aversion of the Desperation Attack, you only have ONE life per credit.- In the Super Famicom version, you only have FOUR credits. But this is mitigated as the damage from enemies is nerfed (specially Bosses) and the recovery items being more prevalent.
- Reformulated Game: the Super Famicom version, called Ghost Chaser Densei, alters the game to make it up for the less powerful hardware: the playable characters were cut to just Makai, Iyo, and Belva (Zeldia, Tulks, and Kurokishi appear within the story, and the first two as bosses, Zeldia appears in Iyo's ending and Kurokishi appears on Makai's ending, on both cases being a Big Damn Heroes moment), some stage parts were cut, and the first bonus stage was removed. In contrast, the characters (and enemies) were given a new set of moves, you can assign a new button to execute the special moves, and you can activate Friendly Fire unlike the Arcade original for those seeking a more harder challenge.
- Samus Is a Girl: In the end of the first game, when Zeldia falls from the building, her true form leaves the monstrous carcass, revealing she's a female.
- Averted in the sequel, where Zeldia is in her true form from the beginning.
- Scoring Points: It's unique in the sense that the game rewards you with more points the lower your life is, and if you reach certain thresholds, your maximum life and power increases.
- Spin Attack: Most characters do this automatically upon recovering from a knockdown.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Everyone can do a variety of grabs, throws, suplexes, and dual-team maneuvers on the unfortunate enemies.
