This gameplay was done on a MiSTer FPGA, taking the A-B-D-G-K-P-V path on normal difficulty.
I was cycling through the Genesis game menu on the MiSTer and gave this one a try, and ended up reaching the second to last stage on my first playthrough. I did a little practicing on the final 2 levels and the clear came a couple hours later. I definitely owe this to the 2P (Tiat) ship being started at a higher power-up level than 1P (Proco). Also, this version of the game is a good deal easier than its arcade counterpart with slower bullet speeds and rebalanced levels with fewer enemies.
I'm definitely happy with my score and no miss clear, which you need to score well - 200k points for each ship in reserve for end-of-game bonuses. Some bosses can definitely be "milked" for extra score, the Grand Octopus (boss of P zone) seems like a good candidate for that.
Maybe someday I'll have the courage to tackle the arcade version, but definitely not without autofire ON!
At this time, Pete Hahn - Retro Gaming has 668 views for Darius II spread across 2 videos. His channel published less than an hour of Darius II content, roughly 1.08% of the content that Pete Hahn - Retro Gaming has uploaded to YouTube.
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