John Romero's Daikatana, or simply Daikatana, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. Released on May 23, 2000 for Windows, it was led by John Romero. The game is known as one of the major commercial failures of the video game industry. Daikatana was later ported to the Nintendo 64. A different version of the game was developed for the Game Boy Color, with a version for the PlayStation cancelled during development. Daikatana's title is written in Japanese kanji and means "long sword"; however, the characters' usual reading is in fact... "daitō". The name comes from an item in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by the original members of id Software, which Romero co-founded. Daikatana is composed of twenty-four levels divided into four episodes. The number of maps per level varies, but is generally about three. Each episode represents a different location and time period: futuristic Japan, ancient Greece, the Dark Ages in Norway and near-future San Francisco. Gameplay tends towards fast-paced combat, although an attempt at introducing problem-solving elements was also included.
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