Actual Darius release date?

[Rupert H]

Taito officially state it was released in 1986, as does the game's title screen copyright, but arcade history (and therefore Wikipedia) says that it was released in Japan in February of 1987. Can anybody shed any light on this?

Cheers,
Rupert.

[trap15]

I'd trust Taito and the game far more than I would trust wikipoo

[Rupert H]

Fair comment and the direction I was leaning in.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, you see, Bob has a VHS recording from 1987 (or at least the on screen timestamp said 1987) and that is no more than a month after when his local arcade in Bumfud got the game in. Jimmy played that machine so hard that one day when he went by to smack the buttons in attract mode, they done fell right out. And that was no later than Christmas! So clearly, Taito is not to be trusted. [CITATION NEEDED]

[Despatche]

unless taito is outright lying, it was released in late 1986 at the latest, and extra was probably released in early 1987

[Rupert H]

Thanks for the replies. Of course I would always go by the official date, I just wondered if there was any concrete reasoning behind the Wikipedia entry that I was unaware off. I know that there are definitely examples of companies making errors regarding release data, but in this case I don't see any evidence of that.

Thanks chaps.

[Squire Grooktook]

I'd trust Taito and the game far more than I would trust wikipoo

I remember several years ago I was reading the wikipedia page for Blast Works on Wii, and the gameplay description summary derailed into some sort of Yo Momma joke about halfway through.

[Ed Oscuro]

I just wondered if there was any concrete reasoning behind the Wikipedia entry

Does it have a citation link? Those little floating numbers in brackets, like [1]. If that's missing you could always try looking at the old revisions of the page, to find the revision where the date was added/changed, and if nothing else you could see who made the change and go yell at them on their user page.

That's a lot more trouble than I'd go to in order to satisfy my curiosity about this though.

Of course there is always a slight delay between development and actual appearance of the arcade unit as mentioned before, but that doesn't mean we should prefer shipment or installation dates over the copyright date.

[Rupert H]

Yeah, as I said, the citation comes from arcadehistory.com. I checked the quote on their page and it didn't elaborate any further than the Wikipedia entry. Not to worry. I'm going with '86.

[Rupert H]

And the plot thickens. Enterbrain and Taito's own Darius Odyssey book lists the release date as 1987. If it was released in February of '87 then I guess it was copyrighted two months before, hence the '86 title screen.

[HydrogLox]

On the Japanese flyers 1986 is listed as the year.
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=f ... 70&image=2
Darius Extra Version also has a copyright of 1986.

On the North American flyers 1987 is shown.
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=f ... 47&image=2

So 1987 seems to refer to the North American release.

[Rupert H]

Yeah, thanks for the link. I've seen the flyer's date before, but it's strange they would take the American date as the original release in a Japan-only book.

[Despatche]

I'm sure Arcade History's date comes from the US release, yes.

I feel like Taito is referring to Darius Extra, though; a 1987 rebalance that was well-liked, though I'm not sure how outright popular it was. If the original game really was released in early 1987... well. 19XX is also credited 1996 and generally considered to have been released in 1996, although most versions have December 1995 program dates.