1112: On PS4, Arcade Archives Darius's music is AWESOME--better than Darius Cozmic Collection's
3Comparison of music in the first 20 second of Taito's arcade shooter Darius ("Extra" revision), as presented on the PS4 by M2's recent Darius Cosmic Collection Arcade, and Hamster Corporations' Japan-only (on PS4) Arcade Archives Darius. I also go over a few other distinguishing features of both versions.
My Darius series playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzOhqCkASJe4zY1HvQk6KcVz
0:00 - intro
2:50 - Cozmic music
4:27 - Archives music
6:02 - Archives sound options
12:50 - Cozmic options
16:27 - Cozmic screen options
21:51 - Archives Hi Score Mode display
23:57 - Cozmic PS Store sale (to 9/21)
29:11 - install sizes
35:45 - PSN Japanese account
They both have their nice points; I'm going to be sticking with Arcade Archives Darius, because man that music is GOOD; with a halfway-decent pair of headphones, it really hits you--whereas in M2's rendition, it's just kind of, you know, fine.
I do like the sharpness of the "Pixel Perfect" screen scaling option in Cozmic, even if it makes the screen a bit smaller. The pause screen map of the routes with their boss pixel art is pretty keen. And how their whole collection--with three other Darius games in it--takes up less than half the drive space (@ 30:00 - 218 MB) of Hamster's!
(I wonder if Hamster is using that space for high quality sounds. Of the arcade version, Wikipedia notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_(video_game)#Development that "The game's upbeat soundtrack was composed by Hisayoshi Ogura, the founder of Taito's 'house band' Zuntata. Ogura wanted the music to convey a sense of a deep, expanded universe, and to make it stand out among other shoot'em up games at the time. Much of the music was composed via a combination of FM synthesis and sampling, while some was made by the Yokosuka Symphony orchestra group.")
Hm I wonder if maybe Hamster used re-engineered samples of the Yokosuka Symphony stuff and some sort of copyright issue there kept them from bringing that version to the States; it IS here on Switch, wonder what the music is like in that version. Probably the same--this speculation is getting a bit far out. ; )
I don't like how you can't have a black background in Cozmic; other than the default blurry game art, the only option is 19:05 that weird gray gradient
I like Archives' low-key presentation, and the during-play display of scores you're chasing in Hi Score Mode.
My previous video crudely compared the control response of the two versions: an astounding mere one frame of input delay for both!
Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade--which comes with the three other 2D Darius arcade games, too--is on sale on the PS Store for $17.99 until the 21st.
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About the Darius power-ups other than the red/green/blue ones:
According to https://darius.fandom.com/wiki/Darius :
- Silver: score bonus
- Gold: smart bomb
- 1-Up: extra life ("A miniature Silver Hawk [ship] in a transparent orb")
9/13/22
#darius #dariusextra #arcadearchives #dariuscozmiccollection #ps4 #shmup #shmups #videogame #videogames #gamemusic #videogamemusic #zuntata