Darius II Special?

[undamned]

Is this familiar to anyone?



From here: http://page8.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/h166038038
-ud

[Op Intensify]

Judging from the text at the bottom, it seems to be a flyer for an unreleased Super Famicom version of Darius II.

Definitely warrants further investigation from someone Japanese-literate.

[Klatrymadon]

Interesting discovery, mate! The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that this artwork adorns Darius Twin's packaging, too.

[Turrican]

Judging from the text at the bottom, it seems to be a flyer for an unreleased Super Famicom version of Darius II.

My guess would be that at some point of Darius Twin development, they wanted to call it Darius II Special, then scratched the idea since the game was shaping into something too different to pass for a rebranded Darius II.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Moonspeakers! where art thou!?

If Turrican's guess is true, that would be a really interesting development actually. Had it not been for the failure to port Darius II to the SNES, I doubt Taito would have ever bothered making console exclusive Darius games otherwise.

[Op Intensify]

My guess would be that at some point of Darius Twin development, they wanted to call it Darius II Special, then scratched the idea since the game was shaping into something too different to pass for a rebranded Darius II.

I'd say it's more likely that they were originally planning for a Darius II port with new extras. They probably scrapped it and decided to make an original Darius instead when they realized that the SNES had too slow a CPU to faithfully recreate the game. That would explain why Twin felt rushed and incomplete.

Wonder if a proto still exists somewhere. We'll probably never know.

[Turrican]

My guess would be that at some point of Darius Twin development, they wanted to call it Darius II Special, then scratched the idea since the game was shaping into something too different to pass for a rebranded Darius II.

I'd say it's more likely that they were originally planning for a Darius II port with new extras. They probably scrapped it and decided to make an original Darius instead.

Yeah, you worded it better than I did, but that's what I meant actually.

[Eno]

Nothing on the auction page or the poster. The only thing interesting in the page is that the auction name ends with something like "temporary name" in parentheses, which supports the hypothesis it's just a proto-Darius Twin. EDIT: Just noticed the "temporary name" thing is also written on the poster, right next to Special(or something very simmilar, it's too small/blurry)
The poster says nothing more. Below the "Super Famicon Software" thing it only says the release date and price are not yet announced. The part in red is too small for me to recognize all the characters, doesn't seem relevant though.
Googling it up is of no use too, it seems, found nothing on that game in the japanese web so far.