Whenever I encounter a shmup on the SNES that isn't annoying me right out of the gate, a weird thing happens where I try to imagine it being in Super R-Type's place during my early childhood. I know comparisons to it have been getting as stale as the bread I had to throw out this morning, but it's my number one frame of reference for this system in particular.
Using my time machine to go backwards and play Darius Twin after turning my brain into sludge from gazing at Super Nova/Darius Force may have successfully drove up my appreciation for Twin. In a vacuum Twin is not that ferocious of a shmup, compared to Super R-Type it is like a paper tiger taking on a storm. On original hardware I was able to beat this in about four tries, and numerous times I found easy safe spots at the top and bottom parts of the screen. Twin lacks fangs, but because of this it flows much better than Super R-Type and doesn't feel like it's trying to turn into gravy due to hideous amounts of slowdown. In a way, it does feel like the developers feared the hardware chugging too much if they introduced more dangerous obstacles and patterns, and thus held themselves back especially towards a console market. If you had released Twin a few years later, you potentially would've had the difficulty inflated with the enemies tanking more shots and the cheat code for 50 ships completely taken out of the game, aka the "Streets of Rage 3" problem, except in a shmup and if Taito had gotten as sour as Sega or Konami did on the rental market.
Of course, it also helps when you're allowed to make mistakes. Twin does not let you continue, but will allow you to respawn on the spot with your full weapons intact. This is heavenly compared to Super Nova which punished you via getting lobotomized by it's use of fade outs and load screens, while Super R-Type may as well give you the electric chair for a single fuck up. I feel like I would've cleared Twin in about a week as a little one assuming I maintained focus on it, and wasn't distracted by Super Mario World or something. I'm not entirely sure how that would've affected my thoughts on it, because in a way Super R-Type feeling insurmountable kinda added to it's allure for me and made it more mysterious and imprint itself onto my mind.
I suppose it's all apples and oranges, because both Darius Twin and Super R-Type are 1991 SNES shmups that are often viewed as 6/10 at best probably. My only conclusion is that it was probably a nostalgia shmup for a few 90s kids growing up. I'm glad to have experienced their personal Super R-Type.
Using my time machine to go backwards and play Darius Twin after turning my brain into sludge from gazing at Super Nova/Darius Force may have successfully drove up my appreciation for Twin. In a vacuum Twin is not that ferocious of a shmup, compared to Super R-Type it is like a paper tiger taking on a storm. On original hardware I was able to beat this in about four tries, and numerous times I found easy safe spots at the top and bottom parts of the screen. Twin lacks fangs, but because of this it flows much better than Super R-Type and doesn't feel like it's trying to turn into gravy due to hideous amounts of slowdown. In a way, it does feel like the developers feared the hardware chugging too much if they introduced more dangerous obstacles and patterns, and thus held themselves back especially towards a console market. If you had released Twin a few years later, you potentially would've had the difficulty inflated with the enemies tanking more shots and the cheat code for 50 ships completely taken out of the game, aka the "Streets of Rage 3" problem, except in a shmup and if Taito had gotten as sour as Sega or Konami did on the rental market.
Of course, it also helps when you're allowed to make mistakes. Twin does not let you continue, but will allow you to respawn on the spot with your full weapons intact. This is heavenly compared to Super Nova which punished you via getting lobotomized by it's use of fade outs and load screens, while Super R-Type may as well give you the electric chair for a single fuck up. I feel like I would've cleared Twin in about a week as a little one assuming I maintained focus on it, and wasn't distracted by Super Mario World or something. I'm not entirely sure how that would've affected my thoughts on it, because in a way Super R-Type feeling insurmountable kinda added to it's allure for me and made it more mysterious and imprint itself onto my mind.
I suppose it's all apples and oranges, because both Darius Twin and Super R-Type are 1991 SNES shmups that are often viewed as 6/10 at best probably. My only conclusion is that it was probably a nostalgia shmup for a few 90s kids growing up. I'm glad to have experienced their personal Super R-Type.