And now: Darius (1986)
Darius was, orginally, a contemporary of Life Force, during the real beginnings of the side-scrolling shooter genre as we know it today. Following on the heels of the incredibly successful Gradius, Darius offere the same back-to-checkpoint gameplay that characterized the early games of the genre. However, it didn't work
exactly the same way, due to the quirks of the powerup system. Unlike in Gradius, you didn't necessarily lose all of your abilities if you died. Each ability had six powerup levels, gun, shield, and bomb. Everytime you finished one set of powerups, the weapons changed its properties. For example, the basic gun became a laser, which could pass through obstacles and enemies, and then wave, with the same properties, only with a wider area of effect. If you collected enough shileds, your shield actually became stronger. Whenever you died, your power evel would reset to zero, on that particular power. You never lost enhanced powers, so even if you died while you had the basic laser, you would still keep the laser.
The real kicker for the gun, however, is that the first level of the next property was weaker than the last level of the previous. The last level of the basic gun is actually stronger, damage-wise, than the first level of laser. The gameplay itself was fairly basic. One button for guns, one button for bombs, nothing too fancy. Poundign through the levels wasn't that much different from any other shooter at the time, except that the game field was, as a rule, two screens wide, similar to the X-Men beat 'em up.
However, the real treat for Darius, was that it was the first game to have something resembling a boss intro. Every time you made it through a level, the background would turn black, a warning Klaxon would sound, and something similar to the following would show up:
WARNING!
A HUGE BATTLE SHIP
KING FOSSIL-A
IS APPROACHING FAST.
The background would then switch to the boss area, and the aforementioned ship would come out from the right end of the screen to throw down. The bosses were a visual treat for the time, far more detailed than most of even Life Force's bosses, and they had another quirk: They all resembled some sort of sea life (The aforementioned King Fossil, for example, was based on a coelacanth). If you managed to win (Darius bosses are not easy), you would continue down the boss cave, and the path would split. going up or down determined the next level. different levels have different overall difficulties, but the number of powerups in a level are directly proportional to the difficulty of a level, while the strength of the boss remains the same. In other words, if you can make it through the more difficult levels, you'll be better prepared to fight the bosses. While the bosses remain the same for most of the levels, each final level has its own separate boss.
Darius, as can be expected, is not an easy game by any stretch. The regular enemies become even more relentless as the game goes on, and the bosses can be downright merciless in their attacks, despite the fact that they don't spray nearly the volume of bullets and beams that they do in more modern games. Still, though, I've found the game to be quite rewarding for its gameplay, music, and bosses, even though it's only once in a blue moon that I can make it past the fourth level (Curse you, Fatty Glutton-H!).
Next article: R-Type (1987).
