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is a 1987 horizontal-scrolling shooter arcade game developed and published by
Taito is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, vending machines and jukeboxes into Japan. I ...
. 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, upbeat soundtrack, and cute
anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...
-influenced graphics. The game was designed by a small team of others lead 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 is the "house band" of Japanese video game developer and publisher Taito. The band consists of sound director Katsuhisa Ishikawa, bassists Yu Shimoda and Shohei Tsuchiya, and drummer Masaki Mori. Zuntata is Taito's core sound department, and has ...
, the majority being composed through a combination of FM synthesis and sampling.


Gameplay

''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 Boss may refer to: Occupations * Supervisor, often referred to as boss * Air boss, more formally, air officer, the person in charge of aircraft operations on an aircraft carrier * Crime boss, the head of a criminal organization * Fire 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.


Plot

After years of pollution and the depletion of natural resources on Earth, humans decided to search beyond the solar system for habitable planets to live on. A space program dedicated to this premise eventually found a solar system similar to the Earthling's and the space colonists selected a habitable planet they named Darius. After settling on Darius, the inhabitants learned to start a new life and thrive in both society and technology. However, their peace was disturbed by an armada of malevolent maritime shaped space craft controlled by the Belser Army, a race of humanoid space colony based warrior people who have selected the Darius colonists as their next combatants. The Darius inhabitants' only line of defense were the Silver Hawk series: single-piloted fighter craft designed for long space travel with the ability to wield different weapons at the same time. Two of the fleet's top pilots were selected to defend Darius: Proco and Tiat. Together, the two assigned in thwarting Belser's attack on Darius.


Development

''Darius'' was designed by Junji Yarita, with assistance by planner Akira Fujita and programmer Toru Sugawara.
Translation
by Shmuplations. ).
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. 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. A single boss took roughly ten days to create. 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. The arcade cabinet, designed by Natsuki Hirosawa, uses three individual monitors made to appear seamless via mirror effects.
Translation
by Shmuplations. ).
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. 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. The enemy names were derived from different types of medicine, alongside names of people within the company spelled backwards. 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; Fujita disliked this idea and cut it from the game. The game also features cute anime-influenced graphics. The game's upbeat soundtrack was composed by
Hisayoshi Ogura is a former member of Taito Corporation's "house band" Zuntata. He is best known for his musical compositions in the '' Darius'' arcade series. His musical style is often experimental electronica. However, in '' Zoids Infinity Ex'' he focused on ...
, the founder of Taito's "house band"
Zuntata is the "house band" of Japanese video game developer and publisher Taito. The band consists of sound director Katsuhisa Ishikawa, bassists Yu Shimoda and Shohei Tsuchiya, and drummer Masaki Mori. Zuntata is Taito's core sound department, and has ...
. 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. 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.


Release

The arcade game made its debut at London's
Amusement Trades Exhibition International The Amusement Trades Exhibition International (ATEI) is the major UK trade show for the coin-op and amusements trade. See also * BACTA (British Amusement Caterers Trade Association) * Coinslot ''Coinslot International'' is a UK trade magazin ...
(ATEI) show in January 1987. ''Darius'' was released for arcades in Japan in February 1987, and in North America in April 1987. Three PC Engine ports were produced by
NEC Avenue was a Japanese music and video game publisher. History NEC Avenue was founded in 1987 as a record label within NEC. NEC Avenue eventually got involved with video games, and secured licenses to produce console versions of arcade titles from Sega ...
for the Japanese market in
1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...
. ''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 The , also known as simply the SuperGrafx, is a fourth-generation home video game console manufactured by NEC Home Electronics and released in Japan in 1989. It is the successor system to the PC Engine, released two years prior. Originally know ...
. 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. 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 developed and published by
The Edge David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), better known as the Edge or simply Edge,McCormick (2006), pp. 21, 23–24 is an English-born Irish musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist, keyboardist, and backing voca ...
for the Amiga, Atari ST and
ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...
in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
. In 2002,
PCCW PCCW Limited (formerly known as Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited) is a Hong Kong-based information and communications technology (ICT) company. The company is the majority owner of telecommunications company HKT Limited, and also holds a m ...
ported the game to the
Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, ...
'' 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 is a Japanese video game publisher, with office located in Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan. The game division of Toshiba-EMI Limited spun off Hamster Corporation in November 1999. On the Japanese PlayStation Store, more than 200 titles are distrib ...
and is part of the '' Arcade Archives'' on PlayStation 4. ''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 The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, ...
in 2002. While never originally ported to the Sega Genesis, a port of the game by M2 is featured on the
Sega Genesis Mini The Sega Genesis Mini, known as the Mega Drive Mini in regions outside of North America, is a dedicated console modeled on the Sega Genesis. The Mini emulates the original console's 16-bit hardware, and includes 42 games ported by M2. It was r ...
microconsole. An expanded version titled ''Darius Extra Version'' was released for the Sega Mega Drive.


Reception

In April 1987, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Darius'' as being the most popular upright arcade unit in Japan at the time. It went on to be the third highest-grossing large arcade game of 1987 in Japan.


Notes


References


External links


''Darius''
at the
Killer List of Videogames Killer List of Videogames (KLOV) is a website featuring an online encyclopedia devoted to cataloging arcade games past and present. It is the video game department of the International Arcade Museum, and has been referred to as "the IMDb for pl ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Darius (video game) 1987 video games Arcade video games Arcade video games with multi-monitor setups Amiga games Atari ST games Cooperative video games Darius (series) Horizontally scrolling shooters IOS games Mobile games Multiplayer and single-player video games Nintendo Switch games PlayStation Network games PlayStation 4 games Square Enix franchises Taito arcade games TurboGrafx-16 games TurboGrafx-CD games Video games featuring female protagonists Video games scored by David Lowe Video games scored by Hisayoshi Ogura Video games scored by Masahiko Takaki Virtual Console games ZX Spectrum games Video games developed in Japan Hamster Corporation games