The Big DoDonPachi Controversy

Did it seem a little odd to you when 5pb. suspended shipments on the Xbox 360 version of DoDonPachi back in March? The company cited "various circumstances" for the stoppage, which came over a month after the original version's release.

Today, one possible "circumstance" came to light.

The company posted a notice at its official site disclosing that in making the Xbox 360 version of the game, fully titled DoDonPachi Daioujou Black Label Extra, developer Aqua Systems had made use of the source code from PS2's DoDonPachi Daioujo. The developer produced the 360 version based off the source code, which it had obtained from a company that managed the code.

This may sound like a good way to speed up the porting process. The problem is, Aqua Systems didn't actually have the rights to the source code.

5pb. learned of the issue after Cave and Arika, publishers of, respectively, the arcade and PS2 versions of the game, asked that it look into the matter. This request came after the game's release.

In its notice, 5pb. said that, as the 360 version's publisher, it takes full responsibility for the copied source code, as well as for the trouble caused by the shipment stoppage. The company did not specifically state that shipment stoppage was due to the source code issue, so it could be unrelated.

The 5pb. notice also contained an apology for delays in a promised bug fix update for the game. An update of some form was promised back in March but never surfaced. According to the notice, it's still on the way.

In closing, the company said that it takes the source code issue seriously and that it will be putting care into fixing its development system and quality management in order to avoid a repeat occurrence.