891st played so far
Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1986
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito
For a lot of these shooters, it feels like it’s a bit more of the same – I swear that a lot of them go by different ways of handling weapons. Raiden, for example, always keeping you supplied with them. For Darius, however, something else applies – rather than having a single screen you play the game on, the arcade machine had three screens side by side. It’s something that’ll be more difficult to emulate at home… good thing we have far higher resolution monitors.
Our Thoughts
Darius actually looks gorgeous – the three screens mean that there is more room to display it and it works well to create a good looking game – it certainly feels more detailed than you’d expect from a game from 1986. It’s not just a nice surprise, but it helped me be drawn into a game more than others have done to that extent.
The game itself helps with that. The shooting is decent too, facing both flying enemies and turrets, with some separately coloured enemies that have the power ups – you don’t need to destroy everyone, but it helps. The level ends with a boss that’s, obviously, far more challenging, but not as unbeatable as some of the other games are. They’re not as elaborate, sure, but they work really well.
Final Thoughts
Darius has a pretty simple, straight forward gameplay, but it looks good and what it does, it does well.