Darius Gaiden (15.4Mb)
This is a really excellent side-scrolling shooter that has stood the test of time. It is of course based on Taito’s hit game Darius from 1994, and it was some years before this PC port arrived. It came out on the Sega Saturn and then PlayStation after the arcades.
Aliens have taken over the planet Darius and it is your task to reclaim the planet. Darius has been one of the finest shmups series in the coin-op arcades over the years in the 90’s and Darius Gaiden is the third (and one of the best!) in the series. Do you hate fish? Well here’s another chance to blow them to smithereens! You have your trusty spaceship, laser beams and shields at your command.
The Darius series use a unique and excellent weapons system. There are power-ups to collect to boost your lasers, shields and missiles (red for lasers, blue for shields and green for missiles). There are two bars at the top of the screen to indicate the status of your missiles and shields. Collect three green power-ups and your missiles are upgraded a level. Laser power-ups change your lasers each time they are collected. You go from a single shot to triple shot, to a double laser, but you lose the power-ups if you die, You do retain any weapons you have collected though. You start with just 3 lives and there are some fantastic and amazing boss fights if you can last out that long! There are obstacles to avoid crashing into, including the ground, and whole hosts of many and often difficult enemies to confront, often in a bullet-hell environment.
Let me say from the outset you won’t find it easy to stay alive long in this game. Although it starts off easy enough; even on the Easy setting, it soon becomes tantalizingly hard then just plain difficult as in really really difficult! And it’s just plain blinking hard or nearly impossible on the other difficulty settings! You can (and probably will!) spend hours and hours on end playing Darius Gaiden, it’s that good!
It plays in 1 or 2 player mode with the ‘Enter’ key and ‘Space’ key to start each player. You can play it single player by pressing the ‘Space’ key to start the game from the menu. For 2 player mode, press ‘Enter’ and then ‘Space’ to play both players at once if wished, ‘Esc’ key to return to the menu and menu or ‘Alt’ + ‘F4’ keys to quit. The menu options allow you to set keys/check default controls settings (changes are saved) and joystick/gamepad use is also supported. It plays full-screen in XP or lower, Vista and Win 7 and may play on DOS machines. If you do have any problems though this is unlikely, you can use DosBox, but it runs fine natively where I’ve tried it in Win 7. There’s a high score table and demo play mode between games. It runs from the extracted folder, including from a USB stick. Magnificent!
The graphics are outstanding for this type of game, very slick indeed - and you’ll find the sprites very well drawn - with enemies that appear and move very quickly, and there are spectacular and huge and ginormous explosions. The sound is equally as good, in fact exceptional, giving a wall of sound at times with stunning sound effects.
The incredible Darius arcade saga enters the next generation faster than a meteor, hotter than a blazing sun! You are the last son of a dying star. Command your state-of-the-art Silver Hawk attack ship, and hunt enemy squadrons to the ends of the universe! Intense shooting action! 28 enemy-packed levels! Smart bombs! Wave lasers! Homing missiles! Multi-stage power-ups! Cooperative two-player action! The odds are against you... the fate of Darius lies in your hands!
I am not understating when I say this has to be one of the best, maybe even the very best freeware side-scrolling shooter!
So don’t spend more time reading this. Get out there and play this!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeHG555HFvs
Download HERE ----- (look for disk symbol mid-page) -----
