The biggest impression Darius makes is it's presentation—super wide, projected from three CRTs side by side in the original cabinet. The levels look good, even though it's repetitive, the enemies and your ship look cool—but the boss enemies are the coolest, massive robotic fish that I have to imagine would take up most of a crt screen themselves.

The sense of choice and progression—both in your ship upgrades and in selecting each level—is decidedly utilitarian, but just enticing enough to make me want to replay, if only so I can see what bosses are behind door number two.

Played as Darius (New Version) in Cozmic Collection Arcade (PC). Route was A-C-F-I-N-T-Z.

I'll admit I wanted to get into this series for only a couple things, the name being one of them. It's a name that means something to me so I thought it'd be fun to try digging deep here. I'm thinking it'll pay off! This was fun but fell short of feeling particularly great to play.

Sounds wonderful, controls are tight (maybe even to a fault), levels are engaging and feel tough as nails while the super wide screen looks like a total treat on two or more monitors! The downgrades you get for dying are immense, though, and a lot of enemies fly at you faster than you tend to be able to shoot! Those and how slowly you move make this game a lot less fun and fair feeling than one would hope for, though I know this wasn't fully designed to be those things just yet.

Also some of the bosses are brutal to the point where I cheesed the last couple by just spamming twin/multi bombs on them from the very bottom of where the game would let me sit. I really don't know how you're expected to beat Iron Hammer in particular, that one's far more aggressive than I could keep up with. Fatty Glutton was super hard for me too, though it's possible my laser just wasn't upgraded far enough to deal significant damage.

Anyway, going back to the time of release I could see this being a total quarter muncher, though I'd imagine it would be a lot more fun playing co-op since the game's likely much more manageable that way considering the low speed of the ships, though the on-screen projectile limit would pose a problem too. Hmm... Regardless, though, there's potential here. I had fun getting boss patterns down until I could clear them and the music was generally nice to listen to while I did so. I'm fairly certain the games going forward improve upon this a lot so I'm excited to get through them when I have the chance.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA this game is punishing as all hell dear lord. I feel like "Long" is the best way to describe this game in one word. This game's main claim to fame gimmick is the fact that it has a 3-monitor wide super long display that everything is played on. The horizontal space for movement here is nuts and, for better or for worse, they utilize all of the extra screen space to its utmost extent. Due to how long it is, enemies can come in zooming from both sides and there's a reasonable amount of time to react to everything, and it makes this game absolutely a game of positioning. If you aren't in the right places to defeat the enemies efficiently, eventually the long display will fill up with bullets and enemies from every direction and combined with the lack of any speed powerups whatsoever if you get into those situations there's no hope. The game is also really punishing as you need 8 powerups EACH to upgrade your weapon, bombs, and shield. Dying once takes all of them away so it's also one of those "if you die at any point you might as well just give up" shmups. The level progression is outrun-style where there are branching paths at the end of each level to choose what level to tackle next, and each level has their own amounts of powerups for each type so you really gotta plan a course around your playstyle if you want to succeed. Also since you need so many power ups to upgrade and there's a limited amount of each in the levels you BEST REMEMBER WHERE THEY SPAWN, once again enforcing good memorization and positioning.

Despite all my qualms about the difficulty I do find the game quite aesthetically cool. The bosses are all fish and due to the large resolution of the game all the sprites look super cool. Zuntata is behind the music so that gaurantees a quality soundtrack as well. Despite the huge difficulty making my playthrough of this quite painful even WITH things like checkpoint save states, I can't say in entirely that I don't like this game. If I saw it in an arcade, I'd surely drop a credit in.

Playing this on the Cozmic Collection on my Switch in handheld mode was the funniest shit I've experienced this whole year. I felt like I was playing an ultra-widescreen Game Boy. Termite-sized sprites a flyin' through this little piece of screen real estate. If I put a magnifying glass up to the screen I might be able to point out "Speckled Jim" or whatever that enemy's name was.

It was adorable, but I feel the screen gimmick hurt the game more than it enhanced it. If I played the real cabinet with the cool speaker setup it'd be different for sure, but my apartment doesn't have the room for that, and if I did I'd rather get an F-Zero AX cabinet. Sorry about that Darius! I'll call you later when I finally get a third monitor for my Desktop PC!

Um shmup que prioriza estilo sobre substância, e olha que tem uma boa quantidade de substância. Não tanta substância quanto o game tenta te vender. Os branching paths com um total de impressionantes 26 níveis e sei lá quantas combinações é muito mais maçante no papel do que na prática, com vários níveis e chefes sendo virtualmente os mesmos, com uma variação mínima aqui e acolá. Ainda assim é bastante conteúdo e mesmo que as diferenças entre diferentes caminhos não justifiquem múltiplas playthroughs tanto quanto dizem são o suficiente para te prender na primeira playthrough e te motivar para pelo menos uma segunda - e certamente não fazem mal caso seja do tipo que quer tentar uma 1cc e vai rejogar várias vezes de qualquer forma.

Mas é o quão estiloso o game é que o torna especial. Meu setup em casa realmente não faz jus ao game, que originalmente usava 3 telões de arcade conectados para criar uma visão que colocaria telas ultrawide modernas no chinelo. Tanto espaço assim é muito bem utilizado pelos níveis e, principalmente, os chefões, que podem literalmente ocupar uma tela inteira e ainda deixar você com outras duas para se movimentar. É um troço realmente muito massavéi, além de vibrante e interessante graças a ideia de usar uma ambientação robô-aquática peculiar em vez do espaço sideral com background preto vazio que domina o gênero. Se você gosta de shmups vai ter um bom tempo com esse game; se você gosta de games bonitões e maneiros vai ter um excelente tempo.

Something about this game looks really pretty to me. The sprite art has a very unique and "painterly" style with a lot of stage backgrounds/foregrounds looking like old japanese paintings or something. The game itself is quite a fun shmup too but the balancing of the weapons is kinda fucked compared to later games in the series - I recommend just powering up the first main weapon (missile) fully and then avoiding red powerups for the rest of the game, because the next weapon (the laser) is a pathetic peashooter in comparison.