Kamui

Overview

Kamui is a shoot ‘em up developed by Siter Skain for the PC and was released in December of 1999. Kamui is a short game consisting of only 5 stages and a final boss battle. While it is considered challenging and fast paced it is quite forgiving overall, allowing the player unlimited continues to finish the campaign. Kamui is the final game in the Tale of ALLTYNEX trilogy, following the events of RefleX.

Story

Humanity is still recovering from the devastating war with the Raiwat. In an effort to advance artificial intelligence and computer systems a scientist named Xaffiquel de Alice conceives a way to interface the human brain with a supercomputer. Ironically enough his daughter Panafill de Alice is chosen as a test subject to interface with an automated Kamui Fighter due to her supernatural abilities. Overwhelmed by this turn of events Xaffiquel turns on the military and uses his own technology to transfer his brain into the Adjudicator, an orbital control platform. Xaffiquel also decides to rebuild the supercomputer Alltynex to help exact his revenge. However, Alltynex turns on Xaffiquel and seizes control of earth’s military, all except for the Kamui Fighter that Panafill is interfaced with. Panafill’s Kamui Fighter must destroy Alltynex, the Adjudicator and thus her father to save humanity.

Gameplay

Kamui’s action takes place on two planes, one plane being level with the player and one plane below the player. The Kamui Fighter features three weapon systems, a laser gun, a lock-on lightning strike, and a lighting beam. The Kamui Fighter is also equipped with a shield allowing the player to take a couple of shots before losing a life.

The laser is the Kamui Fighter's main weapon and requires no additional energy to use; the shots spread wider as power-ups are collected. The lighting strike requires a lock-on which is activated when the player engages the strike and then releases, the amount of targets tracked is reliant on how much Thunder meter is available. The lightning strike is the only way to attack the lower plane. The lightning beam can vaporize incoming enemy shots and deals massive damage to targets. The lightning beam also requires lightning energy and depletes it more rapidly than the lightning strike. This attack can also be used as a secondary shield due to its ability to vaporize enemy shots. The Thunder meter restricts constant use of lightning weapons, when lightning weapons are not in use the meter will fill back up. Success in Kamui ultimately depends on the player’s ability to manage the Thunder meter using it both for offense and defense.