The story of Daikatana is but one part of the long story that is Ion Storm. But the existence of Ion Storm owes itself to Daikatana because I co-founded the company to make this game.

When the idea of creating another game company entered my mind, Daikatana wasn't my dream game per se, but a game that was my entire design WAS my dream and I wanted a company where I could do it. So after leaving id Software and six months' worth of working deals, Ion Storm had funding from Eidos and we were on our way, creating three games at once: Tom Hall's Anachronox, Todd Porter's Doppleganger, and Daikatana. Todd abandoned Doppleganger about six months after starting it and switched over to Dominion. I won't be rehashing Ion history outside of Daikatana, though.

Ion Storm's first office was in a building called the Quadrangle near downtown Dallas. Here's a pic of the original Daikatana team about six months after starting Ion.

Left to right: Brian Pritchard Lead Art Jerry O'Flaherty Art Director Brian Cozzens Artist Matt Hooper Map Design Peter Marquardt Producer Kee Kimbrell Coder John Romero Game Design Shawn Green Coder John Anderson Map Design

If you click the link above, Knee Deep In A Dream, you can read a lot about of the story of Daikatana's development. There's much more to be told but it would require an entire book and I doubt that many people would be interested in it. From this point on, the many pieces of memory that make up the total picture of Ion Storm will blow away in the wind over the years.

Here is a list of the range of Daikatana products that were created:

Daikatana had a huge amount of press and promotion during its development. I showed the game at E3 for three years (sigh), we held a Daikatana release party in front of the Ion Storm building, we held a Deathmatch party on a barge in Austin, Texas, we had another deathmatch event at the Ion Storm offices...the list goes on. There were lots of cartoons making fun of Daikatana, lots of articles in magazines, and lots of ranting online from gamers and even the development staff. It was a three-year-long nightmare. Yes, I started writing the design in February 1997 and the game shipped in April 2000 - three years.

I've gone on record to say that I'm proud of the PC version of Daikatana and I stand behind that. It was not meant to be a beginner's FPS but rather an expert FPS that required more than just the player hopping around and thinking only of themselves like most other FPS's - Daikatana required you to also help your sidekicks survive the ordeal alongside you. This new play mechanic threw many people off the game because it was too difficult. But playing Daikatana again today, this is one fast and furious FPS...still.

I was in Bucharest, Romania in January 2004 and was walking past a bookstore and saw a European Box of Daikatana in the window. The next time I came back to Bucharest in April 2004, I went into the bookstore and found Daikatana moved to the software section and the price was $50. Insane for the economy there. But it's still in the stores, heh.

The GameBoy Color version of Daikatana was designed to be like Zelda on the NES and it succeeded brilliantly. Unfortunately, Kemco (developer of both GBC and N64 Daikatanas) didn't release the game in the USA because of the completely devastating treatment given to the name Daikatana by the press at large. It was released in the UK and maybe some other countries, but I've made it available here as a ROM file (below, in the download section)

The N64 version of Daikatana was abysmal. 'Nuff said.

Here's a piece of creepy and interesting information: As most of you know, my website domain is Romanian (.RO) - I got this domain long before I met my wife, who is Romanian and I met her while she lived in Bucharest, Romania. My name "John" in Romanian is "Ion". My wife lives on a major street named "Ion Mihalache". Raluca's sister Ruxandra's middle name is Ionana, which is the feminine form of John. And how do you explain ROMero and ROMania? Muahahahaha! And now we know......it's really JOHN STORM! Check it!

Daikatana Downloads

Here are all the downloads of significance for Daikatana that you need. If you know of something you think others would like to have, contact me and I might add it to the list. These files are hosted by myself on a blazingly fast server.

Daikatana GBC Here's the poor little fella that didn't make it to the US market, Daikatana GBC. It's actually a fun game - the reviews are unanimous about that. It seems to have made it to PAL format regions, though. So grab it here (along with the emulator). When KEMCO approached me about wanting to do a GBC version, I told them I wanted it to be a Zelda-like game. Also, I wrote all the text for the GBC version. If you want to laugh and read what many people's opinions were like about Daikatana PC, check out this article: 1UP.COM DK NEWS I have two prototype cartridges of this version that I kept around. Check 'em out.

Proof that it exists!

Daikatana Pre-Alpha #1

Four and a half years after its release, the Daikatana fanatics of the world shall now view the fledgling team's first two months of work. It's nothing awesome but it's a snapshot of our game in development at the very beginning with a team that had only two members survive the development process: myself and Shawn Green, who became the fifth and final lead programmer on Daikatana. Make sure to read the DOC (or TXT) file before running it!

More good stuff to come...

Special thanks to DI-MeisterM and The EO for feedback and testing!

If there's more you'd like to read about in this section, please post your thoughts in the Daikatana forum.