Darius (video game)

Arcade version screenshot.

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.[6] 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.[6] Yarita designed these battleships and created a total of 26 different designs; however, time constraints only allowed the development team to use 11 of them in the final game.[6] A single boss took roughly ten days to create.[6] 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.[6]

Darius cabinets use mirrors on the sides of the center monitor to reflect monitors below.

The arcade cabinet, designed by Natsuki Hirosawa, uses three individual monitors made to appear seamless via mirror effects.[7] 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.[7] 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; however, it proved too costly and was scrapped.[6] The enemy names were derived from different types of medicine, alongside names of people within the company spelled backwards.[6] Fujita worked on the stage designs and power-ups himself, which he stated was one of the biggest challenges during development — ship upgrades were originally in the form of small pod-like craft that orbited the player; however, Fujita disliked this idea and cut it from the game.[6]

The game's soundtrack was composed by Hisayoshi Ogura, the founder of Taito's "house band" Zuntata.[8] 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.[8] Much of the music was composed via a combination of FM synthesis and sampling, while some was made by the Yokosuka Symphony orchestra group.[9] The song "Captain Neo", used in the game's first zone, was originally used as the main theme for Taito's earlier arcade game Metal Soldier Isaac II, used as a placeholder track during its presentation at tradeshows — Ogura liked the track for its sense of "overwhelming power", and decided to keep it in the final version.[8]

Darius was released for arcades in Japan in February 1987, and in North America later that year.[10]

Three PC Engine ports were produced by NEC Avenue for the Japanese market in 1990. Super Darius was released for the CD-ROM² System add-on on March 16, followed by Darius Plus as an 8-Megabit HuCard version on September 21. Darius Plus is the only commercially-released HuCard that has enhanced support for the PC Engine SuperGrafx.[11] A third version, Darius Alpha, was released as a sweepstakes giveaway and was limited to only 800 copies. Darius Alpha is an alternate version of Darius Plus where the player fights only the bosses. Like Darius Plus, it has enhanced support for the SuperGrafx.[12] All three PC Engine versions were developed by Bits Laboratory. During the same year, a home computer version of the game titled Darius+ (unrelated to the similarly-titled PC Engine port) was published by The Edge and developed by Softek for the Amiga, Atari ST and ZX Spectrum in Europe. In 2002, PCCW ported the game to the Game Boy Advance in Japan as Darius R.

In August 2016 the original arcade version was re-released for PlayStation 4 in Japan and other Asian PS-Stores. The port was made by Hamster Corporation and is part of the Arcade Archives on PlayStation 4.[13] Darius R, a remake of the first Darius game with some different tunes and a fewer number of stages, was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002. While never originally ported to the Sega Genesis, a port of the game by M2 is featured on the Sega Genesis Mini microconsole.[14] An expanded version titled Darius Extra Version will be released for the Sega Mega Drive.[15]

In April 1987, Game Machine listed Darius as being the most popular upright arcade unit in Japan at the time.[20]

• Darius at the Killer List of Videogames