A THING CALLED TUNA SASIMI
I guess that means back to Darius, Captain Stargazer.
Yeah, back to the Silver Hawks, that means one thing: The Arcade Archives version of Darius II.
We'll all be planning that route, we're gonna take real soon.
We're waxing down our surfboards, we can't wait for June.
We'll all be gone for the summer, we're on "Surfari" to stay.
Tell the teacher we're surfin', Surfin' USA.
Just as I predicted on my review of Arcade Archives: Darius. The Darius series are arriving to the Arcade Archives, and Darius II is the latest entry.Sturmvogel Prime wrote:I'm sure that if this game made its way to the Arcade Archives, it is very likely that Darius II and Darius Gaiden will sooner or later make their debut on the Arcade Archives series.
I made a brief review about Darius II/Sagaia on both Console and Arcade editions of Darius Cozmic Collection, but not a FULL analysis of the game, and this review will be a great chance for that.
If you're gonna play Darius II as if you're playing the first one, you're not gonna last. The reason of this is the change of the game's mechanics. Starting off with the redesigned power up system. To begin with, getting items are no longer following the "Shoot the red/green/blue enemy" rule you got used back in '86, this time the power ups are obtained by a formation of "Spinning enemies" that you have to destroy all of them in order to obtain that item. While Darius required to pick 8 power up capsules without losing a life in order to level up a specific Silver Hawk technology, here it is reduced to 7 for the Missile (guns), 5 for the Bombs, 8 for the Shield and 6 for the Laser. Since the Missile becomes a large energy blast that stops on contact with the enemies and obstacles and there's no more Wave Shot, the game addresses that with a new weapon: The Laser, which acts as a second bomb, but it is shot by pressing the missile button. Regardless of its power level, the Laser passes through obstacles, acting as a replacement of the Wave Shot. Keep in mind, since there's no "Missile-Laser-Wave" upgrading due to the change of core mechanics in favor of a more "fast" paced gameplay, if you die with a level 6 shot, you'll return to your weak thin laser firing. Same goes for the Bomb and Laser, being the shield the lone exception which retains the same "Arm durability" increase mechanic. As long as you don't get hit, you can increase the Arm/Shield's strength by picking the blue orb.
Handshake and a smile gets you on through.
Then turn it all around with a suicide move.
Your weaponry is not the only one that changed in this game, there's not one, but two additional improvements in gameplay. First is being able to face left or right during the boss battles, allowing you to perform frontal attacks regardless of the boss position. This feature fixes one of the most common problems on shmups: being unable to face enemies behind you with the regular weapon unless they're in front of you again. The second is the special bomb that suddenly appears on the stages and sometimes during boss battles, for instance in the first level. Destroying the bomb in the right moment can destroy both the boss and trigger the detonation of the second bomb that appears behind the boss, ending the battle immediately. The stage's rules also changed as the game throws a new concept: Captains. The former bosses from Darius re-appear as midbosses with new attack patterns that make them differ from what you've saw before, the addition of new stage hazards like dead ends and destructible blocks that block your path in some levels. Difficulty seems to be more like the original Darius more than its rebalanced versions, since some of the enemies in the Venus levels can take a lot of hits if you lose your firepower, requiring you to become more evasive-defensive until a power up formation appears or the second player joins in. Playing the game with two players make things a little easier as the enemy formations drop more items for both players to get equally powered up.
One final addition was the new Zone Select screen. Rather than forcing the player to quickly decide to go up or down before crashing like in the first game, here you'll be on the Solar System map where you can see and choose which level you want to tackle next without having the game pressing you.
Low-Vis* combat on Venus' skies.
* = Low Visibility.
Homeporting Darius II was an endeavour since it wasn't ported to computers, but to consoles as if Taito noticed the growing market on the rising console industry. Compressing a 3 screen game in a single screen was a challenge for any console, but not impossible. Being the 1991 Megadrive port (Sagaia on Sega Genesis) the most memorable and widely known of the ports as it managed to carry more of the musical quality of the arcade rather than retaining the graphics in a similar way to After Burner II and Vapor Trail, but sacrifies the co-op option. Instead, it allows the player to play as Proco Jr. or Tiat Young, and this is not a single color swap. While Proco Jr's Silver Hawk's power levels are the same as the arcade and require the same amounts of power ups to gain strength, Tiat Young's ship is much stronger even on the lowest levels, making her ideal for beginners. For some reason after the Genesis release, the Sega Master System got a port of Sagaia in 1992. Exactly 1 year later than its 16-Bit brother, but the game was released only in Europe and Brazil (by TecToy). Curiously, it was developed by Natsume (Shadow of the Ninja, Harvest Moon series, Wild Guns) unlike the Genesis release which was done by Taito themselves. In gameplay is pretty much the same as the Genesis: Choose between Proco Jr. or Tiat Young, Tiat is stronger, etc. While the game manages to carry parallax scrolling and the waving fire effects in the first level, is just like I said in the Cozmic Collection: Console review. This game is too much for 8-Bit, with the slow gameplay, butchered branched paths and less endings which I've already mentioned before at the point of adding more words about it would be like repeating myself. In contrast, the PC Engine had its own port in 1993. Not a card game like Darius Plus, but a CD based game for the CD Engine equipped console: Super Darius II. While it also carried the "Play as Proco Jr or Tiat Young" like the Sega versions, the game took liberties with the cast of enemies, managed to make the stages arcade faithful, and the ending cutscenes were redrawn. Unlike Super Darius, it didn't used the original arcade music and sound effects for the sake of arcade accuracy and instead it utilized a rearranged CD soundtrack based on hard-rocking in most of the levels. The Sega Saturn version released in 1996 was the weirdest of all. While it retains the arcade graphics and sound, it does it in a quite odd way: Zooming Out the game making the three screens look compressed on a wide-screen effect for the single screen. Also, this compression makes the game look more like a color enhanced version of the Genesis game with the arcade sounds added. Unlike the rest of console ports, the Saturn release restores the Co-op 2 Player function for the sake of arcade accuracy and adds an autofire option with adjustable firing rate. For some reason, Nintendo didn't got a port of the game. Being Darius Twin the closest thing to a port since there's a few things borrowed from Darius II, and the Gameboy Sagaia was an entirely different game. Curiously, the PlayStation didn't had a home port, even when it made ports of old arcade games on its extense catalog. Nintendo and Sony had to wait 30 years to get a console version of the game. In 2019-2020, the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 consoles got the first arcade perfect ports of Darius II as part of Taito-M2's Darius Cozmic Collection: Arcade. While the game added the rare Sagaia versions of the arcade game with more linear routes (even more than the Master System port) and different stages, the game was actually based on the 2-Screen version, unlike Darius' three screens. As part of the Switch exclusive Taito Milestones 2, the game was released once again. This time as the three screen version, which was released individually for both PS4 and Switch on October 5th of this 2023 as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives. Like in their release of Darius, the Arcade Archives version stretches the screen enough to cover the vertical boders unlike the Cozmic Collection port which reduced the resolution in order to fit the gadgets (Boss Analyzer, Cabinet Art, etc.).
For those who were expecting the Arcade Archives to carry both three and two screen versions and the Sagaia releases you'll be disappointed since the Arcade Archives release only has the triple screen game version which is also in Japanese. Fortunately, it carries a few features inherited from the Cozmic Collection release. In "Display Settings" we can enable the "Unit Panel" wallpaper which displays the Darius II marquee and the instructions with the map. "Preference Settings" allows us to switch between Player 1 and 2 Silver Hawks in a single player game, enable the Arm Duration (Shield's HP), allow the vibration function on the controller when a Captain or a boss appear in the style of the cabinet's "Body Sonic" feature and recreate the ending message. I guess it refers to the "Next Year, Darius III" (Metal Black) announcement from Zone X), but ditches the Boss Analyzer, the power levels indicator and the song name displaying. Even with those out, the new settings make this version look much closer to the Cozmic Collection port than the first Darius game. A problem that needs to addressed is the unability of having a "Missile+Bomb" button like in Cozmic Collection. The Darius series require you to tap both missile and bomb button simultaneously, and the Arcade Archives omits that as if the control configuration treats the game as any other standard game.
Familiar faces make a comeback.
Graphically it is an impressive improvement from what Taito learned from Darius, as the three screens put the concept of "Going Big" in a great scale. The Silver Hawk sprite is much more larger and detailed than it was on the first game and it yaws (banking) when it moves up or down rather that standing in a "fixed" position. The parallax scrolling in the artificial underground bases is amazing and adds a lot of depth than the basic two layers in Darius.
While the first Darius took place on their fictional star system, this time the action moves towards our Solar System, starting from the Sun all the way to Jupiter. While retaining the mechanical sea creature nature that made the Darius series its symbol of identity, it also experiments with bio-technology like the boss Bio Strong which looks like a nod to R-Type (and Super Darius II's Mech Bio Strong looks like a Turrican boss), and for the first time in the series, the game utilizes the concept of using your ship as a boss to fight against as the Belsar ship "Mother Hawk". Scenery also pulls a few experiments that go from the traditional formula of facilities, caves and starfields. There's a ruined city level on Earth where you fight a Japanese battleship before taking down the mechanical crab hidden on it, there's also Giger/Alien stages that reminds me of Super Contra (Zone P for example). A sense of experimentation that made its first steps in the franchise with a resounding success.
The sound department makes a change from the somewhat trippy-weird space out music in favor of a more upbeat pace, like "Olga Breeze" (Sun), "Muse Valley" (Mercury) and "Boss 2" are calm, yet enigmatic melodies that feels like the predecessors of Metal Black's mysterious "Waste Days" in the style of the crystaline nature and feel of the song. "Jamming" (Venus) makes a brief return to the space weirdness with the high pitched notes at the start of the song but they manage to add rhythm to the tune as the song progresses and loops throughout the stage. "War Oh!" (Boss Theme) adds the sense of imminent battle to the music with the initial scream/screech that preceeds the music. "Cynthia" (Moon) might be an odd name for a shmup song, especially when the theme is marching-based as a war prelude, but its one of the most solemn tracks of the game. "Planet Blue" (Earth) is a high pitch note based song similar to "Jamming", but this time is a little more calmed as we wander the outside world of the Earth before entering the underground base that is hidden within the dirt beneath us. "To Nari" (Mars) is another trippy space tune that adds beauty and mystery at the same time without being too calm like "Muse Valley" as if the tune was based on revealing another mystery beneath us (Zone P for example). However the full flat-out weirdness is the song "Say PaPa" (Jupiter) which plays on the end of the penultimate level and final stage due to the slow calm that opens the song and removing all the in-game sound effects until the fast pace plays a few seconds after entering the stage (Zone X for example), while adding some dramatism, it also feels surrealistic.
THE SAGAIAN CURIOSITIES OF DARIUS II
Taito wanted a thing called Bandwagon.
- First Darius game where the plotline leaves their galaxy and takes place in our Solar System.
- Second and last Darius game that featured the triple screen cabinet like its predecessor.
- "I always wanted a thing called Tuna Sasimi" became a meme within the shmup community.
- First Darius game to feature voiced dialogues.
- First time in the series to feature a few non-fish enemies. This experiment was later exploited in Darius Force/Super Nova.
- Please, for the love of God, don't confuse the Genesis' Sagaia with the Gameboy Sagaia, that's a whole different game.
- Some of the bosses of this game (Driosawm, Steel Spin and Hyper Sting) appear as bosses in Super Darius and the Genesis Mini version of Darius.
- For some reason, Earth's Moon is depicted with a planetary orbit of its own rather than being an object orbiting Earth.
- While the Arcade version of Zone W's endings shows Darius "New-Mesozoic" landscape as a jungle, the Super Darius II version depicts it as a volcanic landscape.
- The stegosaur seen on the ending is the Stegosaurus Ungulatus, one of the largest stegosaurians (almost 10m long) which explains why is as big as the Silver Hawk.
- The phrase "Darius inhabitants have already ruined" might be a censored way to say "Darius inhabitants are already dead".
- Zone X's ending leads to the events of Darius Twin which both are Non-canonical since Zone X leads to a bad ending.
- While Zone Y's ending is the second "Joke Ending", it changes the premise of "Pilot playing the game" to simply a dream of Proco Jr.
- Natsume's involvement with a Taito game will be later seen in The Ninjawarriors Again and Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors/The Ninjawarriors Once Again.
- The Arcade Archives release is the second port of Darius II on PlayStation 4, third on Switch, and the seventh port of Darius II overall.
- The ability of turning your ship left to right was reutilized on the Dariusburst series.
- Tecmo used the ship turning gimmick in 1991's shmup Raiga: Strato Fighter.
- In Dariusburst, the Darius II Silver Hawk was named "Silver Hawk Second".
- The concept of "Tiat is stronger than Proco" was carried on the Genesis Mini version of Darius.
- The "City Ruins" levels of planet Earth are nodded on Metal Black's stage 1 "Down to Earth" up to the mechanical crab with a carrier on its top.
- The boss Vasteel Nocht from Thunder Force VI is an obvious reference to Mother Hawk as both bosses are oversized versions of the player's ships.
- The former player ship as enemy would be retaken in the Dariusburst series as Dark Helios which takes the form of Sylvalion.
Partly Metal, Partly Real, All Arcade Hit!
We've might end up assembling another Darius Cozmic Collection: Arcade throughout Hamster's individual Darius releases considering they'll end up releasing Darius Gaiden sooner or later. But unlike M2's compilation, this 3 screen version of Darius II is a Darius II that really deserved to be there and Hamster gave us the answer to the prayer, on its own way.
If we already have two Darius games, don't be surprised if RayForce suddenly makes its debut in the Arcade Archives.
The score doesn't lie, this is one hell of a classic.