Developer: Taito Publisher: NEC Released: September 21, 1990 Genre: Shooter
Darius is a stalwart of the shooter genre and has been since the mid-80s. At a time where Gradius was wowing gamers with its power-up system it made a huge splash with its triple monitor setup. Gameplay wise it did not innovate next to its contemporaries outside of its awesome branching system. A system I might add that no one has copied for some reason. One of the first ports came to the PC Engine as Darius Plus and it is a solid rendition of a good game.
The weapon system in Darius is spartan. Certain enemies drop colored orbs that can upgrade your bombs, shield, or main cannon. These go through multiple levels with shields able to take more hits and missiles upgrading to twin missiles and such. The main cannon has the most noticeable growth, evolving from single missiles to lasers and finally a wave beam. There are other orbs such as gold orbs that are smart bombs, silver for points, and 1-ups but these are exceedingly rare.
There is nothing wrong with a simple weapon system so long as the game is designed around it. Darius Plus can feel a bit cheap in this regard. It takes eight orbs to progress your weapons to another level. Orbs are not in ready supply and if you die your weapon level resets. At least you keep the current power level but it is still brutal in practice. You won’t see the wave beam for example until near the end of a single run and that is only if you have not made any mistakes. You feel incredibly weak up until that point and the game would have benefited if you gained power faster. Unfortunately this is a practice that would continue through most of the series.
Darius has always moved to the beat of its own drum. For many you either love it or hate it. This is a slower shooter but nonetheless still manages to create moments of tension. The level design is such that continuous enemy waves usually follow long instances of silence. The terrain is just as dangerous and combined with the fact that death carries such a huge penalty weapon wise cautious players will make mistakes. That being said it is very repetitive. Even though there are many levels many of them are mere palette swaps of each other with a slight change of enemies and a different boss. While that may seem disappointing the effort adds to the game.
Aside from its multiple monitor setups (impossible to replicate at the time) what makes Darius stand out is its branching path system. At the end of every level you are presented with two choices to progress. In total there are twenty eight levels with a single run consisting of seven stags at most. There are multiple endings although the differences are quaint. Still the branch system gives Darius Plus a huge amount of replay value in a genre where scoring is usually what drives it.
The series has always been difficult. Darius Plus is only slightly easier than the arcade game. The biggest concession is that you respawn instantly upon death. But this is a double edge sword. Because there are no checkpoints you cannot collect orbs to power-up. Although it takes at least a level or two to raise weapons a level at least grabbing a shield helps. Chances are once you die it will happen in rapid succession, especially on bosses. Extra lives are rare so most will have to put in some work to reach even one ending. Figuring out the best route is half the fun though.
Originally Darius Plus was also a CD title under the name Super Darius. This version has unique bosses for all twenty six of its levels, a noticeable step up over even the arcade game. It also has a redbook audio soundtrack. Darius Plus has sixteen bosses compared to the arcade’s eleven. Some of these are back ported from Darius II but in the end all that matters is that it has more content. It is also unique in that it is compatible with the Supergrafx. Plugging it into that system removes nearly all of the slowdown and flickering. It would have been cool to see more enhancements but let’s be honest; the number of people who owned that system was not high enough to warrant that much extra work.
In Closing
Darius Plus is a solid port of the arcade game and pretty good in general. It lacks the bombastic action of its competition but still stands out thanks to its aquatic theme and replay value. There are other games I would recommend first but you cannot go wrong with this one.
