You Should Probably Play Darius Gaiden
I'm going do a short review of a game I've been waiting for on Vizzed. Introducing, Darius Gaiden.


Fun Fact: This game is a favorite of doujin game creator ZUN, who is responsible for creating the Touhou Project games.



And thus this game was born.

GRAPHICS: 9/10
When
you think 1994 graphics, you would think something on SNES and Genesis,

while they were impressive, they couldn't hold a candle to some of the

powerhouse games released in the arcades. Darius Gaiden was one of those

games that there was no way the SNES or Genesis would be able to port

without completely watering it down first; gorgeous games like Darius

Gaiden had to wait for the 32/64-Bit era to have their chance to shine

on the consoles.


The game's first boss, Golden Ogre. When actually playing the game, notice how the boss moves so smoothly and almost 3d-ish.

Okay,
if I show you a screen shot of this game, you would say that it looks

like a 16-bit title, and that's somewhat true, but screen shots don't

really do this game justice; You need to play this game in order to

experience how 32-bit it was. You need to see it in motion to check out

the nice scaling effects that SNES's Mode 7 could only wish it could do.

I'll just let the game speak for itself



Witness the amazing, satisfying explosions after every boss fight...


...and behold the awesome graphical power of the Black Hole Fish Vacuum. You heard me right, you can create a black hole.


It's always nice to fly over an ocean in Darius Gaiden.

SOUND: 8/10




I like the sound effects in this game. I can't really describe them,

they are really odd sounding, but in a good way. I like the sound that

plays when you launch a black hole bomb, it really gives you the feeling

that you just unleashed a powerful weapon upon the enemy.

The
music, on the other hand, is more or less an acquired taste. The

soundtrack was done by Taito's in-house band, Zuntata. (now you know

were ZUN got his name from) Their work in this game is very suspenseful

and always makes every scene in the game sound epic, but the sound track

might not appeal to everyone, I mean it's CD quality audio and all, but

the problem is some people might find the first and second level theme

to e quite bizarre and somewhat creepy. A woman can be heard singing

"Close your eyes...Close your head...." to some sick synths, eventually

followed by some operatic singing. This odd combination of operatic

singing with synthesizers as well as real instruments freaked me out at

first and kind of made me not want to play this game at first, but

eventually I found the music of the first two stages to be almost

hauntingly beautiful in a sense. Once the music grows on to you, you'll

love  how fitting it is to the rest of the game. The song played when a

later boss, Laser Light Illusion, comes out from another dimension to

fight you, as you at first se its tail and eventually the rest of its

body come out of the portal, you get pumped up and get ready to have an

epic battle with the boss. Darius Gaiden is one of those games that has

music that makes every boss battle not just feel like a boss battle, but

a boss duel to the death, like each battle feels intense.

Addictiveness: 8/10

Darius
Gaiden is a very addictive game. The game will have you coming back for

more every time you get your butt kicked, and there's one thing that

sets the Darius series apart from most games...


The zone select system.

In
every Darius game, after you beat a level, you get to choose which

stage you want to go next. Once you beat the city stage in Zone A, you

can choose if you will go to Zone B, The Grassland, or Zone C, The

Ocean, each with their own unique level design and end boss. The result

is a game that goes through seven stages that branch out into unique

paths in 26 stages in all and seven different endings. You will be

replaying this game endlessly to play all of the stages, get all of the

endings, and get higher scores. Add in a second player, and the fun gets

even better from there.

STORY: N/A


There

is a story to Darius Gaiden, but really, who cares? Besides the intro
and ending,
 the story isn't really touched upon in the game, but if you really want to know, then fine, I'll tell you.



Basically,


this game takes place after the first Darius, but before Darius II.


After Proco and Tiat (Players 1 and 2) had thought they saved their home


planet Darius from the Space fish army of Belser, the two decide to


help the citizens of Darius migrate from their war torn planet to a


temporary home: the planet Vadis.



Everything was going fine until...


Um, excuse me, but didn't we kill all of the giant metal space fish just a while ago?

The Belser makes a sudden reappearance and attacks the spaceport to Vadis on Darius


The Spaceport before it got attacked and blown up with really cool explosion graphics.

Now the Belser Army is going to head for the planet Valis to destroy the refugee Darians.




Looks like this is a job for the Darian Army!

The Darian army tries to fend off the Aquatic Terrorists, but to no success. Darius' last hope lies with two powerful Silver Hawk star fighters and two exceptional veteran pilots willing to take on an army of space fish.


There were a couple more Silver Hawks, but they kind of got blown up by lasers, eaten by Golden Ogre battleships, or both.

Basically, it's your typical man vs. alien fish army plot, nothing too special, but this is a shooter, we didn't come here for story, we came here for ACTION.

DEPTH: 9/10

Let's see.... Shooters aren't exactly known for depth, but this game lets you upgrade your gun, bomb launchers, and shields, you can temporarily make mini bosses fight for you if you it the orb on their heads enough times and grab hold of it (Boss grabbing would go on to be a very important mechanic in the equally great sequel, G Darius), and all of this combined with the game's branching path level structure really leads to the game's depth being bumped up really high.

DIFFICULTY: 7/10

As with a lot of spaceship shooters, Darius Gaiden is quite challenging. It is not Danmaku/Bullet Hell type hard, but it is still a very challenging game that will require plenty of skill to beat. The game manages to have a well balanced difficulty that welcomes beginner and veteran shooter fans alike, easing them in to increasingly more challenging levels each stage. The game will kick your butt, but it is not a frustrating game, you keep wanting to continue and keep trying until you defeat one of the final bosses at last.


That's me. I just got blown up by one of King Fossil's missiles.

Speaking of continuing, Due to the fact this game emulates the arcade cabinet, you can put in as many quarters as you want, thus allowing you to have unlimited continues. This might make the game too easy, so I recommend that you discipline yourself on how many 'quarters' you put into the virtual machine; I suggest 3-5 Credits maximum for this game, that should be enough to give the game back its difficulty since you can just keep pressing 5 to get a ton of quarters, but real men don't cheat, real men use reasonable amounts of credits.




Overall, Darius Gaiden is one heck of a game and will put you on one wild ride, I suggest you all play it at once. I think this might be the first review for a MAME game on Vizzed, and MAME's still in beta here, but the game runs flawlessly and is well worth the beta ticket purchase (or you can just wait for it to come out officially)

FINAL VERDICT: 9.9/10


"I always wanted a thing called Tuna Sashimi!"

Darius Gaiden - Silver Hawk © 1994 Taito.

In the game, the third in the "Darius" series; the player flies an ornate fighter craft called a Silver Hawk. The craft is equipped with two attack weapons : Missile (forward-firing standard gun) and Bomb (drops from the bottom of the ship). The Silver Hawk is also equipped with the 'Arm' (armor); a green energy shield that can absorb enemy attacks without harm to the ship. Some enemies leave panels behind that can be collected to power-up your shots, missiles or shield.

The graphics and sound are superior to those of the previous Darius games, and the game employs a lot of impressive visual effects; for example, the Silver Hawk warps into a stage dramatically in the fourth-tier stages, and begins to burn on re-entry at the start of the sixth-tier stages.

The bosses are huge and far more complex than those of the previous games, each employing several attack patterns and explode with powerful warping and twisting effects upon their defeat.

-TRIVIA-

Darius Gaiden was released in September 1994.

The title of this game translates from Japanese as 'Darius Side Story - Silver Hawk'.

The game forbids the initials 'SEX' on the high score table. If you try, it gets changed to 'AAA'.

Pony Canyon / Scitron released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Darius Gaiden - PCCB-00166) on November 18, 1994.

-UPDATES-

The US version has the "Recycle It, Don't Trash It!" screen.

There was an EXTRA version in this game and it was their official hack with increased rapid fire, and swapped bosses. In this EXTRA version, in a 1-player game, if you press 2P Start, you won't be able to select your path at the end of a level, and you'll have to complete the 28 levels to end the game. The same "trick" is available in a 2-player game if you press 2P Start first, then let Player 1 join in.

Overall 9.5    Graphics 10    Sound 8    Addictive 9    Depth 9    Difficulty 9

You Should Probably Play Darius Gaiden   uberkoopa
I'm going do a short review of a game I've been waiting for on Vizzed. Introducing, Darius Gaiden. ...
      Review Rating: 4.9/5     Submitted: 08-17-12     Updated: 08-17-12     Review Replies: 6

My review of Darius Gaiden   blahblahblah213
Where do I begin...I've seen this game a lot in YouTube and I personally wanted to play this myself....
  Graphics 10   Sound 8   Addictive 9   Depth 9   Difficulty 9
      Review Rating: 3/5     Submitted: 09-09-14     Updated: 09-23-14     Review Replies: 2

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