Where the Darius Love at?

[Anesthetize]

Sorry if this has already been answered in this thread, but I haven't made my way through all of it yet. Is the PS2 Taito Legends 2 a decent way to play Darius Gaiden and G-Darius? I haven't played either game and would love to give them a go, and that compilation seems like a pretty good deal.

edit: typo

[Lernaean]

I'll be dropping them a line for sure. I love the game on iPad but I'd much rather have traditional controls. I'm likely to buy one of those stretched & curved monitors I posted about for playing the old arcades so a PC release that can maintain the original format would be great.

I hope you get to play it then, because the mobile version is nothing like the arcade. And i don't mean ipad vs arcade difference, which makes sense anyway, i mean a huge difference.

[JBC]

I'll be dropping them a line for sure. I love the game on iPad but I'd much rather have traditional controls. I'm likely to buy one of those stretched & curved monitors I posted about for playing the old arcades so a PC release that can maintain the original format would be great.

I hope you get to play it then, because the mobile version is nothing like the arcade. And i don't mean ipad vs arcade difference, which makes sense anyway, i mean a huge difference.

Yeah I know, I got the iPad one just for a taste & will eventually do the PSP/Vita one when I can. I want the real deal bad though.

[Knockworstface]

I'll be dropping them a line for sure. I love the game on iPad but I'd much rather have traditional controls. I'm likely to buy one of those stretched & curved monitors I posted about for playing the old arcades so a PC release that can maintain the original format would be great.

I hope you get to play it then, because the mobile version is nothing like the arcade. And i don't mean ipad vs arcade difference, which makes sense anyway, i mean a huge difference.

Yeah I know, I got the iPad one just for a taste & will eventually do the PSP/Vita one when I can. I want the real deal bad though.

I own the iOS version as well. I play it as much as I can on my iPad and iPhone. I've never played any of the arcade versions. That will have to change real soon.

[soprano1]

Sorry if this has already been answered in this thread, but I haven't made my way through all of it yet. Is the PS2 Taito Legends 2 a decent way to play Darius Gaiden and G-Darius? I haven't played either game and would love to give them a to, and that compilation seems like a pretty good deal.

I'm not a regular of this thread, but i'll say you can't go wrong with those two on Taito Legends 2. Not to mention the other quality games in there. It's a really nice compilation.

[EmperorIng]

If you have a turbo controller, it's also a great way to play GRID Seeker and Gun Frontier as well (excepting MAME).

[Captain]

I present you Manabu's Darius 1 final boss remix.

Warning: ears might implode in an orgasmic burst.

https://www.mediafire.com/?mgcnrzew45r6oaf

You can both download and listen from mediafire for a while now.

[soprano1]

I present you Manabu's Darius 1 final boss remix.

Warning: ears might implode in an orgasmic burst.

https://www.mediafire.com/?mgcnrzew45r6oaf

You can both download and listen from mediafire for a while now.

Delicious. How is the rest of the album?

[Captain]

I think he only did this one.

[soprano1]

I think he only did this one.

I meant the Darius Remix album, where this track is from.

[Captain]

Listen to what I'm sayin...

[Batchee]

I think Manabu only took part of creating the boss 7 remix, there were 8 artists participating

[Captain]

I don't think its important enough to discuss, what matters is that who ever did make it did an awesome job.

[Batchee]

Personally, i think this remix is the best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t1Kk_QAlBg

[Captain]

Why is that video locked. Does this "Batresh Vic" hold other treasures in his upload trove?

[Despatche]

Sorry if this has already been answered in this thread, but I haven't made my way through all of it yet. Is the PS2 Taito Legends 2 a decent way to play Darius Gaiden and G-Darius? I haven't played either game and would love to give them a go, and that compilation seems like a pretty good deal.

Darius Gaiden is alright iirc, but I think there's an odd graphical bug somewhere? G Darius is interesting because it has almost no slowdown; even the original arcade game does, and the PlayStation version has lots, so you get a somewhat harder game.

[Batchee]

Why is that video locked. Does this "Batresh Vic" hold other treasures in his upload trove?

distinct stuff, mostly test uploads and last but not least.. embarrassing uploads of levan polka songs. I'm a scrap-collecting extortionist.

[Captain]

>_> Sigh.

Fake Remix (lol)

And then mediafire broke, so I switched to mega.

Self Remix

GT Remix

[ProcoTaito]

[ProcoTaito]

We're rushing into the next zone!
Be on your guard!

[mehguy]

Well, today I decided to play darius for the first time, specifically dariusburst for psp. Some great gameplay and a great weapon upgrade system. But DAYUM, the graphics are gorgeous and colourful.

[Captain]

Is Gaia Seed somehow related to Metal Black?

It has a similar charge weapon system. The final boss is a mysterious orb and has to be pacifist'd (as opposed to getting yourself killed to it in MB) for the good ending, and the bad ending can pretty much link to Metal Black directly.

[Skykid]

All clear.



C/F/J definitely took me the longest to crack, mainly because of Phantom Castle, J's meteor shower, and Glutton's belligerence.

Phantom Castle I'm getting a little better at now. I can usually strip him of his armour enough to hammer away at the core a while and if he goes into the burst cannon early on form two I can nearly always reverse it. This cuts down playing with his horrible lasers quite a bit. Gluttons is just resilient and his cannon is at a difficult angle to reverse, so I just had to go through the patterns endlessly and try not to lose my shield. Still no confident strat for the end of J either, I usually lick way too many hits there.

I'm sure the score is terrible, I don't know as I've not been paying attention to scoring.

Anyway, that's all routes clear! The cab is complete! This Silver Hawk can finally go home.

[Despatche]

i think it's ex time for that silver hawk :>

[Skykid]

i think it's ex time for that silver hawk :>

Sadly there's no EX locally, so I'll need to wait for the new courses.

[CHI]

Anyway, that's all routes clear! The cab is complete! This Silver Hawk can finally go home.

Well done... Now your next challenge... Play with Origin

[Despatche]

Should have been here when this thread started...

Super Darius II is a bit weird, as they added the bosses from Darius to give every stage a different boss[...]

Incorrect. Most of the bosses in Darius II were removed, and completely new ones were added. Not every zone has a unique boss; there is only a slightly higher number of unique bosses than in the original game. However, every zone has a unique captain (every final zone has two), many of these being the full lineup of bosses from Super Darius.

The rank isn't quite as bad as it seems, not picking up power ups is even worse for survival and scoring imo.

The real issues are the recoveries, which can make the game borderline unwinnable unless you're super pro.

Incorrect. You should avoid powering up either weapon type more than once per stage (this makes each stage slightly harder), and you should avoid taking powerup items at maximum weapon power levels (this drives rank through the roof). Also, you should always try to go for the "with Missiles" power sub-levels up to "big Wave, homing Wave options, Missiles", because Missiles do way more damage than the Waves you get at the next sub-levels. This is made all the more clear in Extra Version's All Stages mode.

Gaiden is one of the games where recovery is fairly easy; you only lose a bit of power, the rank still drops a lot, and this game has bombs.

I've read G-Darius on the PS1 is slower than the arcade original, and the Taito Memories 2 port is supposed to play at the right speed (480i though).
Is it really the overall speed of the game or is it just about a few slowdowns ?

The PlayStation port has more slowdown due to being slightly weaker hardware (the arcade hardware is an overclocked PlayStation). The PS2 ports have no slowdown at all.

Darius R is "often chastised" for good reason I think; it's pretty bad. For some reason though I still ended up putting time into it and got my first 1cc in it a few days ago.

Not really. It's about as easy as Super/Plus, it changes up gameplay a bit (gold items are now used for scoring), and it even has more view of the screen than Super Darius II.

Question: Is the "top" path in Darius games necessarily the easiest one or does it vary from game to game. I still kinda suck at Darius so I'd like to try to take on the easier paths first. What would be the preferred survival path in Gaiden and G Darius?

Higher stages are typically easier and lower stages are typically harder, but depending on the game bosses can be all over the place (Gaiden is a great example of this).

ABDHLQV it's the easiest route in Gaiden.

G is overall easier than H.

Got one for Darius II? Been playing it on MD recently.

ABDGKPV (all up, then down for stage 7) is the easiest and one of the highest scoring routes in that version.

Darius Gaiden was designed well around its default firing rate and you lose a fair bit of its depth using that particular cheat.

Not at all. Darius Gaiden has a lot of balance problems regardless of autofire, but not having it makes the game almost impossible to take seriously; it's a bit like trying to no miss Garegga. This is why Extra Version has it programmed in and enabled by default (allowing the stage 2 captain to be used with it properly), and why the Saturn version has that code.

People really need to sit down and take this game seriously, because they might actually stop liking it.

I dunno, but the first boss in the extra version, Crusty Hammer, takes an absurd amount of punishment, even using the rapid auto.

That's because it's supposed to be a stage 6 boss, and Taito didn't bother to change its health.

I've played Gaiden in an arcade in Kyoto and it had auto-fire enabled. In fact, there was no 'normal' fire button, just one button with auto-fire and a bomb button.

Pretty much every arcade in Japan uses an autofire circuit with Gaiden, because that's how miserable the game is without it.

I've mainly just played a bunch of Gaiden and snippets of the originals. What would ya'll consider the hardest title?

Two options:
-Darius II, because dying nearly anywhere in that game means you may as well reset, and this combined with some of the later stage designs is outright terrifying.
-Darius Gaiden, because some parts of that game can get literally impossible depending on a combination of how you play it and RNG.

Darius 1 Arcade is the hardest, no question. Your ship is very slow and underpowered, and you lose all weapon upgrades upon death. The massive playfield coupled with small sprites makes aiming and dodging disorienting.

Darius isn't nearly as bad about dying as II is simply because you don't lose all weapon upgrades upon death.

The real disorientation isn't in the large playfield, but in trying to emulate a game that uses three large monitors on one small one.

Especially with the "get back on your feet" power-up orbs being random in their drop[...]

Those are triggered whenever you reach one and zero lives remaining and then destroy a powerup wave. They also barely help you at all.

Gaiden and G also retain your weapon power levels after dying.

Gaiden knocks you down to the first sub-level of the last level. Sometimes this can lead to chain deaths.

... Another cool thing about this version? There is a cheat that allows you to play any level and in whatever order. So you could play them all if you want. BACKWARDS!!

Unfortunately, that code also gives you a bunch of lives. Super Darius II All Stages might have been nice.

The power-ups are much more generous on Easy and Super Easy[...]

Difficulty A (easy) is the original difficulty Darius II was designed for, which is why some powerup waves do not give you items on difficulty B (to the point where it is impossible for two players to both reach maximum power). Beyond this, it's possible that difficulty A was made easier (in terms of enemy health and bullet patterns) after default difficulty was switched to B.

From everything I've heard about it, the Saturn version sounds like the Xbox 360 and PC version of Ikaruga (hard changes after the fact). I'm going to assume that Super Easy has the lower health of Sagaia difficulty A.

How does the saturn and md versions of darius 2 compare? Obviously,saturn version sounds like its a lot tougher...what other differences are there?

The MD version is a very different game, and a lot easier. The Saturn version is about the same as the original, but there are a few small weird changes that haven't all been figured out yet.

I wish most people didn't think silly like this, because of this reason why so many hate Gradius III AC, yet praise the basterediized & overly oversimplified 4 meg SNES version as "fixed." I mean "geez, people, it's not that hard, really. And you even have the option of 4 extra easy difficluty settings to boot. So there zero excuse for that game getting blasted for it's difficulty." ... That I think just about every other shmup seems harder to me... hmm?

The SFC version of Gradius III has a lot more to it and isn't as fundamentally broken as the arcade version is (they did not remove the ice level because they couldn't fit it). The problem with that version is that it's programmed poorly and has way too much slowdown everywhere.

It's similar to Darius R zooming in the screen so much as to make it completely un-enjoyable.

Again, R actually lets you see more of the screen than Super Darius II does, somehow. This isn't necessarily a slight against Super II.

Are they even giving them a chance?

No.

No, there is an autofire code for the Saturn version. It doubles the amount of shots allowed on screen at once.

So you can have eight shots on the screen at once? If so, that may not help as much as you think...

And if you do have the 2 screen one, I thought they were much more rare?

MAME having the three screen version as the parent is such a huge mistake... Darius II is supposed to be two screens. If anything, the three screen version is what's rare.

hexidecimal digits

This is how you know someone is really into a game. And yes, I've messed around with hex for my fave game too once until I pratically figured it almost all out. So you've gone this far? You must really love this game. Guess it's your fave in the series? How you rank the rest?

No, Extra Version just uses hexadecimal in its debug menu.

Don't get me wrong about my complaints about stage 2, both of them are beatable and I've beaten both. But they are very unbalanced and I think most people would give up on the game after seeing them. Cool as it is Darius II has some serious design flaws. Balance is one, and the impossible recovery is an even more significant flaw. The impossible recovery almost makes a good argument for DII being a quarter muncher, were it not for the fact that the game is possible to 1cc despite being rather unfair.

Darius II is actually fairly well-balanced, aside from its "one life" nature. The stage 2s are not hard at all... being able to get to stage 3 only to die to something stupid is the closest thing to "consistency" I have with this game.

- I'm really not noticing what "adaptive difficulty" setting does in the dip switches for Darius II? Guessing raises difficulty as you play & do better/not die, but haven't noticed anything yet. Really need to try it for the last two levels to maybe notice something?

Makes the game harder as you stay alive longer. However, the game is still completely overwhelming at low power level, even if you're playing Sagaia on Easy at the lowest rank possible.

- Anyone know the difference between Darius II ver. 1, 2, & 3? Only noticed a difference from 1. The powerups don't fly up & off the screen first, but go down instead first. Ver. 2 & 3 may just have a score abuse/major bug fix a la Gradius II PCB? What about other Darius Arcade games? (non-extra versions/major revision differences. It may be too much to ask? As I want something more detailed the what wikia has)

"version 1" is the three screen version, and it happens to make items drift up instead for some reason. I don't know of the differences between the "old" and "new" two screen versions.

- anyone know anything of rank for other Darius games besides Gaiden?

"rank" = "adaptive difficulty".

Also, just noticed yesturday that the auto rate in the PS1 version is pretty freakin fast (like at least 3 delay, maybe?). So it may be more balanced without it?...

Trying to play G Darius without autofire is an even bigger mistake than Gaiden. Autofire in G is more like autofire in II.

The Gaiden argument is somewhat more complex only because it has autofire by default.

No, it does not have autofire by default. The incredibly pointless "autofire" is equivalent to every single arcade game that occasionally spits out a bullet when you hold down button 1.

This is completely ignoring how much of a mess Gaiden is to begin with, autofire or not.

Darius II practice you say... switch to easy difficulty! Now! Before you suffer the wrath of very repetative restart burnout. ... I see the Genesis version fixed this.

Arcade difficulty A and the MD port only make it harder to die. Dying is still the worst thing in the world, and in arcade difficulty A the rainbow powerup is still the most useless item in the game.

I'm too tired to go through the other half of the thread.

[ACSeraph]

Jesus man did you just read this entire thread?

Just with regards to the Darius R thing, whether or not it has more play view than Super II or not, it's way more of a problem in R because of the excessively cramped boss fights and the fact that there are often turret enemies on the cielings and floor shooting at you that you straight up can't see. It's bad design, without question. The game would have been alright had it been zoomed out, but as is I'll take GB Sagaia over it any day.

---

Also I can actually tell you a pretty good amount about whats different in SAT DII versus the PCB, since I've got a good amount of experience with both. The big thing though is the broken hitboxes on the lasers fired by the satellites in DII SAT. It really seriously fucks up some of the stages.

[Despatche]

I read half of it, after seeing a lot of questions go unanswered. Again, should have been here from the beginning.

Super Darius II and Sagaia suffer from that way more than Darius R does. It's not so much bad design as it's just ridiculously hard to port Darius games to such small screens. Even Darius II MD with its ample horizontal room had to make everything about half the size it was... and decided to mess up the sense of scale with some enemies and objects in the process. Then you have the MS version, which is an absolute nightmare to play (and to have programmed, I'm sure).

[Squire Grooktook]

I did a lot of runs in my 1lc journey for Darius Gaiden, and I never found that refraining from picking up power ups significantly hindered me. Not picking them up on the other hand, and potentially being under powered against a tanky boss with difficult late patterns (that having more weapons would let you speed kill, ie deadly crescent or the sea anemonae thing) was a far more deadly threat.

Recoveries are more an issue when your first learning the game, but at that point they can seriously impact a run, potentially preventing you from getting crucial weaponry or armor upgrades, possibly for the whole game.