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Hawk eats fish. Big fish.
Darius Gaiden, third in the series of Darius games for the arcade, is a 2-D side-scrolling shooter with great pixel art and demanding gameplay. The giant fishy design of the boss ships is really interesting. The game is super colorful and detailed with a note of the psychedelic in the backgrounds and the music really engaging.
How's that for a mouthful of bomb!
Your ship, The Silver Hawk (get it, you’re a hawk hunting fish), shoots missiles and bombs, has a shield, and can unleash a black hole bomb special attack that sucks enemies in and then blows them up. You can upgrade these weapons with colored power-ups that appear on the screen. You can also capture minibosses to fight for you by picking up a sphere that releases from them after they take a certain amount of damage. For some reason, I missed this feature in my first play of the game.
There are 28 levels of the game but you only play through 7 of them to get to the end. After each level you choose one of several branching paths to advance. This adds incentive to replay the game to see every level. It will take more than 4 plays though as the level choices are arranged in a sideways pyramid format that makes more levels available near the end than at the beginning. That means you need 7 plays to sample all 28 levels.
Something I really appreciated with this game was the massive explosion you get when you beat a boss. It literally lights up the whole screen obscuring everything. It gives you a real sense of the power of the ship you just destroyed. It’s very satisfying.
Darius Gaiden was also ported to PC and Sega Saturn in North America.
I though I'd played one of the Darius games on NES, but I just remembered it was Gradius, a similar game put out by Konami.
This is another reason to get both Taito Legends. I like Shmups well enough and the Pixel Art and action look amazing.
Yea, all three of them. Taito Legends 1 and Taito Legends 2 on both Xbox and PS2 to get all the games. I hate when they do that.
Cool.
I'm darn psyched to find this game in an arcade somewhere. I bet it looks fantastic in that cabinet.
Even though they're almost the same game, I prefer G-Darius over Darius Gaiden because of the ship capturing mechanic. You could even capture mini-bosses and use them as shields, bombs, use their secondary fire, or use them to charge your boss-killing super laser.
Like I said before, Darius is one of my favorite shooter series even since I played the first one in arcades that had the three screen long cabinet. And the first level music of Darius, "Captain Neo," is one of my top favorite game songs ever.
Those multi screen cabinets look amazing. I'd love to find one of those in an arcade somewhere.
That song is pretty cool.
damn man those graphics are beautiful!
This is Dariusbust, but can you imagine those graphics on a mega screen like this?
Whoa. Now that is art.
I had the one they released on the PS1, it was cool but not as pretty as this one. They were doing the whole polygon thing. I need to find this Taito collection, I only have the first one. The music is really impressive too.
Ug, the polygon thing is really ugly to me. It does give a better sense of 3-D, but it's not elegant.
still own this title on my sega saturn. real sweet game and one of my prized jewels of my collection. i wonder if the chrat codes from the game will still work on this collection game. though I already own this game I would not mind having it again in this collection. i sure hope you cover laser section if I recall thats its real name . i know it as galatic attack on the sega saturn. unless thats on the xbox release of this collection that is.
Yes, dammit, Galactic Attack, also known as RayForce, is only on the Xbox and PC versions of Taito Legends 2. I'm going to pick up that version sometime.
Well, looks like I can pick up a copy of the Saturn version of Darius Gaiden on Amazon for around $20. That's good.
That game looks so cool, I can see myself spending a great many fun hours with it.
When I play it again, I'll have to go for high score or limit my continues to try and make it more challenging.
I don't think I ever played this game, which is shocking considering my cousins are big into these shooters, and that's how I found out about them.
There are others that are a little more well known I guess like R-Type and Gradius.
I do enjoy those games, heck I picked up R-Type last week in a Humble Bundle. It was the main reason why I picked up that bundle
I played Gradius on NES a little while back. I could tell it was pure quality in the first few minutes. It kicked my butt pretty soon thereafter though.
I own that game! I have it on NES, SNES, and the PS2 game that has III and IV. Funny I'm missing part II.
I want to play all those. Gradius arcade version is on Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits for DS which I have. Gradius II is on Konami GB Collection Vol. 3 for Game Boy but that was only released in Japan and Europe.
Dang so in order for me to give Gradius II a try I have to import it.
Yes, that is if wiki is correct.
Wow,this shoot em up certainly is beautiful! Dem bosses and projectiles! (Metal piranha for the win,son!)
Yea, that's a metal piranha. What if they inhabited puddles in the road. They'd eat your car!