Darius (Arcade) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 781
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Darius
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_(video_game)
Darius[a] is a 1987 horizontal-scrolling shooter arcade game developed and published by Taito. Players control a starship named the Silver Hawk in its mission to destroy the Belser empire before they wipe out the planet Darius. Its gameplay involves traversing through a series of scrolling levels while destroying enemies and collecting power-up icons. It is notable for its unique three-screen panoramic display,[1] upbeat soundtrack, and cute anime-influenced graphics.
The game was designed by a small team of others led by Junji Yarita. In contrast to other similar games, which feature mechanical or insect-like enemies, Darius uses aquatic creatures like fish and crabs for its enemies and screen-filling bosses. Its large arcade cabinet, based on Taito's earlier panoramic display game Laser Grand Prix (1983), was designed to provide a cinematic atmosphere and stand out from other games at the time. The upbeat soundtrack was created by Taito's "house band" Zuntata, the majority being composed through a combination of FM synthesis and sampling.
Darius is a two-dimensional horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up set in a fictional future. Uniquely among shoot 'em ups, the game's screen is three times wider than conventional size, and the arcade cabinet uses an arrangement of three screens to accommodate it. The player controls an ornate fighter spacecraft, named the Silver Hawk, and must navigate through scrolling terrain while battling a variety of fighter craft, ground vehicles, turrets, and other obstacles throughout the game's stages (referred to as zones in the game). The ship's arsenal consists of forward-firing missiles, aerial bombs and a protective force field, all of which can be upgraded by power-ups (in the form of large, colored orbs) that are dropped by specially-colored enemies throughout the game's zones. When the player reaches the end of a zone, a boss appears, which must be defeated to proceed. Once the boss of a zone is destroyed, the player is given a choice of which zone to play next via a branching path. While there are 28 zones in total, only seven can be played in a single run.[2][3][4][5]
Darius was designed by Junji Yarita, with assistance by planner Akira Fujita and programmer Toru Sugawara.[7] Fujita was interested in creating a shoot'em up game where the player fought a huge battleship at the end of each stage — as a way to "spice things up" and make it stand out among other similar games, Fujita made the bosses themed around fish and other aquatic creatures.[7] Yarita designed these battleships and created a total of 26 different designs, but time constraints only allowed the development team to use 11 of them in the final game.[7] A single boss took roughly ten days to create.[7] Some of the unused designs made it onto the game's promotional material, which was attributed to the art being outsourced to a different company.[7]
The arcade cabinet, designed by Natsuki Hirosawa, uses three individual monitors made to appear seamless via mirror effects.[8] The idea was previously used in Taito's earlier games Wyvern F-O and Super Dead Heat, and was added to give the game a more cinematic presentation and to make it feel more unique compared to other shooting games on the market.[8] A headphone jack and volume dials are also present, as is a speaker system installed beneath the player's seat, which is referred to by Taito as a "body sonic" system. This concept was originally meant to be used for the 1983 game Laser Grand Prix, but it proved too costly and was scrapped.[7] The enemy names were derived from different types of medicine, alongside names of people within the company spelled backwards.