Doujin Classics: Hikware’s Shooters

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November 22, 2012
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A lot of you probably already know about Hikware – a doujin developer that consists of just one man – Hikoza T Ohkubo. He’s responsible for, probably, the most famous doujin Shooter of all time – and the game that actually got me interested in the doujin Scene in the first place – Warning Forever.

This was way back in… oooh.. 2003? So why am I bringing it up now? Well, we were talking about our first Doujin experiences – the games that really made us sit up and take notice, or rather the games that made us realise that there was a really strong PC scene in Japan and one that warranted further exploration. Warning Forever (and a few others that we’ll cover soon) came out, pretty much, on top of everyone’s lists.

Warning Forever was a shooter unlike anything I’d ever played at the time. You controlled your ship with the cursor keys, shooting with ‘Z’ and altering your firing direction and spread by holding down ‘D’ – a control configuration that takes some getting used to, but it’s amazing how quickly you adapt, how proficient you get at nailing direction and spread. There’s a good reason for that – from the moment you start playing, there’s something ludicrously compulsive about it.

You see, you’re pitted against a little pod bristling with a handful of guns – that’s the initial enemy. The clever thing is, depending on how you destroy it, the enemy pod evolves at each stage into a bigger, badder more menacing boss – with all manner of crazy lasers and gun-covered appendages, hellbent on your destruction on an increasingly restrictive screen. All the while the clock continued to tick down to your impending demise.

For days after I discovered it, I played nothing else – such was it’s power.

If you’ve NEVER played any of Hikware’s shooters, Warning Forever is undoubtedly the one you should play first, although he also has a great range of other games and shooters which are equally worth investigating.

You’d do well to try them out and best yet, they’re completely FREE and can be found in our store here.

Simply click the ‘download’ button to immediately start your download.

Apparently Hikoza is currently working on a new game – we really can’t wait to see what he has in store for us, though he promises to let us know when the time is right!

Do any of you guys want to share your first Doujin experiences with us? We’d love to know in the comments section below.