Retro Reboot SHMUPtember 2026 | Darius Gaiden (Sega Saturn)
Enough fish blasting to make Klee happy
"ColonelFancy" Mike Lind
9/1/20264 min read
Developer: Taito
Published by: Taito
Release date: September 1994
Ahhhhh, my favorite time of year. The weather is cooling off. Kids are back in school. The atmosphere is quieting down, and September is the time I love to dedicate to one of my favorite video game genres, space shooters. For the better part of four weeks, indulge me on my venture into the world of dodging a near endless assault of enemy fire, while powering up your ship to god-like degrees. And I can't think of any other game to kick things off with than Darius Gaiden.
From one of the arcade giants, Taito, Darius Gaiden is the fifth game in their stellar SHMUP series. Darius Twin for the Super Nintendo is the first game I recall playing, and it was pretty good for what it was. Though, it wasn't in the ballpark of some 16-bit space shooters I was playing at the time. Gaiden was released for the Sega Saturn (a console I can talk about until I alienate everyone from my social circle), a game my dad picked up to fill out what was a quickly expanding Saturn library. With its amazing visuals and intoxicating music, Gaiden remains a heavyweight among my top SHMUPs.
Partial forgiveness for the Saturn gushing (only partial), but when it comes to visuals and animation performance on Sega devices, SHMUPs just really excel on these platforms. Darius Gaiden is a BEAUTIFUL game. There's seldom two stages that look alike, and despite the copious amounts of bullets and firepower you're wielding, the game suffers from absolutely zero slowdown, flickering, or graphical clipping. Essentially from producer Hidehiro Fujiwara, by taking advantage of Taito's [then] cutting-edge F-3 System, the game was designed to be a visual showcase.
And when it comes to bosses and enemies, the Belsar empire have always had a soft spot in my heart. Mostly because the heavy emphasis on their aquatic theme. There's enough fish blasting to make the Spark Knight Klee happy for an eternity. It's too bad that S-VIDEO has been phased out, because Darius Gaiden is stellar on older TVs.
As for the music, Hisayoshi Ogura brings his electronica/trance influence to this entry, and like the other before, it works amazingly well. Some of the backing tracks and accompanying background vocals evoke an eerie, yet enchanting vibe that accommodates the occasionally solemn venture through the stars. It doesn't have to overpower the mood with heavy guitar riffs, the energy is established by the intense action. It's a soundtrack that wafts through your play.
The controls are simple, but quite satisfying. Flying feels well enough, and I never felt I blew my thumbs out by firing at the enemies the way I do for games like Silver Surfer. Some of the staple Darius weapons return, and the same escalating tier is in place; icons that power up your main cannon, auxiliary missiles, and screen-clearing Black Hole super bombs (which can be a little trippy) aid Silver Hawk. The hitbox is fairly generous.
If there is any area where the amazing visuals will work against itself is I'll occasionally lose track of my firepower getting mixed up with the waves of bullets flying AT me. I wouldn't really call these cheap kills, nor a knock at the visuals. More likely, I should know better to be more aware of my surroundings in a SHMUP. Darius Gaiden has a good number of stages, 28 zones throughout 7 paths, along with multiple endings. I've always appreciated the replay value of this game, it's one that I can pop in and play for a good half hour.
The difficulty can have some...rather interesting spikes. The bosses can become quite the bullet sponges in the second leg of the game, regardless of the path chosen, and they can take a good minute to put down. Some of them even having multiple forms, so there's a good number of dodging I find myself doing. It also begins to scale upwards when your weapons power down following death.
One amazing quirk that I've enjoyed over the years with the Darius games are the some of the weird names for the bosses. For as fierce as some of the opposition may be, it's pretty tough to be intimidated by enemies with names like Ancient Dozer, Risk Storage, Double Dealer, and Fatty Glutton (ALL REAL BOSS NAMES). A portion of the fun is seeing which silly name pops up. Intentional or not, it's such a Taito thing.
Darius Gaiden has always been a childhood classic, and one of the stellar entries in this SHMUP saga. The scale of the game at the time was in a league of its own, with the top notch production values, crisp controls, awesome music, and impressive arcade visuals. Whether it's the creative subtle uses of CGI with background effects or bearing witness to the massive boss Titanic Lance (an enormous battleship that's almost bigger than the Zone you enter to reach it), the game is eye candy. Gaiden is always a delight for me to play, and if you're a fan of the genre, I highly recommend it.
