{"id":20238,"date":"2020-07-10T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T00:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=20238"},"modified":"2020-06-24T19:02:58","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T19:02:58","slug":"darius-cozmic-collection-console-switch-ps4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/10\/darius-cozmic-collection-console-switch-ps4\/","title":{"rendered":"Darius Cozmic Collection: Console (Switch, PS4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m a huge fan of the Darius 2-D shooter series from Taito.\u00a0 But what is Darius?\u00a0 While it may look like a generic classic space shooter at first, it has some elements that helped split it apart from others in the arcade.\u00a0 One, a lot of the spaceships you battle are designed to look like robot fish.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why that is, but it gives the game a weirder tinge to it that I like.\u00a0 Two, the original arcade game was three screens long!\u00a0 This was advantageous because you could see far ahead of you and could plan accordingly.\u00a0 It also gave you a bit of elbow room since the game was also two player simultaneous.\u00a0 And three, the music was really good!\u00a0 The stage one theme, \u201cCaptain NEO\u201d is one of my all time favorite pieces of video game music.\u00a0 Taito has an in-house band named Zuntata that does most of their game music, which is cool.\u00a0 Anyway, I was super excited to find out that now there are two collection of Darius titles for Switch and PS4.\u00a0 There\u2019s an arcade collection and a console collection, and I\u2019m reviewing the console collection for Switch.<\/p>\n

This collection has four main games that were released for consoles, either original games or arcade ports.\u00a0 Gameplay in all is pretty much the same.\u00a0 You pilot the Silverhawk spacehips and in most of the games you play as Proco or Tiat, which is just Taito Corp spelled backwards!\u00a0 Fire shots and missiles to shoot anything that moves, and collect power-ups to increase your projectiles and missiles and the all-important shield.\u00a0 At the end of each stage you\u2019ll get the iconic message \u201cWARNING, A HUGE BATTLESHIP (insert name here) IS APPROACHING FAST\u201d And then you fight a giant robot fish boss.\u00a0 After than you usually can select the next stage on a branching path, which helps increase the replay value.\u00a0 And that\u2019s pretty much what you do.\u00a0 This collection lets you choose options on how to play each game as well as display modes and other things.\u00a0 Here are the four main games you can play on the console collection.<\/p>\n

Darius II\/Sagaia<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sequel to Darius was renamed Sagaia in certain regions.\u00a0 Not sure why.\u00a0 Aside from different stages and music, as well as added mini-bosses, this is just more of the same.\u00a0 But at the time, that was perfectly acceptable.\u00a0 There are three different versions to play here.\u00a0 There\u2019s the 16-bit SEGA Genesis and Japanese Mega Drive games, as well as an 8-bit SEGA Master System version that isn\u2019t too bad for what it is.<\/p>\n

Darius Twin<\/strong><\/p>\n

You get the Japanese Super Famicom and US Super Nintendo versions of this early SNES title, but it\u2019s pretty much the same game either way.\u00a0 This was a fairly early SNES launch title, so they really played up the two player simultaneous aspect since there weren\u2019t very many games on the console that did that back then.\u00a0 I remember renting this game a couple of times back then.\u00a0 The music was cool in a Mega Man X sounding way, and it wasn\u2019t overly hard since I remember beating it before I had to turn the rental back in.<\/p>\n

Darius Force\/Super Nova<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second Super Famicom Darius game was renamed Super Nova in the US, which is sad because back then I would\u2019ve never known it was a Darius game.\u00a0 I would\u2019ve at least rented it had I known, but I don\u2019t remember seeing Super Nova in the rental places anyway.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like this one as much as Darius Twin because in Twin, when you die, you just start up right where you left off with all your power-ups.\u00a0 In Super Nova, you must start back a bit with no power-ups, so it’s a lot harder and more frustrating.<\/p>\n

Darius Plus\/Alpha<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Turbo-Grafix 16, also called the PC Engine in Japan, had a very good port of the original Darius arcade game.\u00a0 In fact, the only better port I\u2019ve seen of the original Darius arcade game was on the Genesis Mini.\u00a0 Anyway, Darius Plus is the main game, while Darius Alpha was a limited contest prize that is just a boss rush mode.<\/p>\n

And those are the games.\u00a0 Really the only problem I had with this set is the lack of content.\u00a0 They really should\u2019ve put G-Darius on here as well.\u00a0 It was a console game for the PSOne and had neat 3-D graphics and let you capture enemies to help you, which was a great idea.\u00a0 I also think they should\u2019ve combined the games in the arcade collection and just made one big collection instead of making you buy two to get them all.\u00a0 And even then, it would be missing games like Dariusburst, the last game in the series.\u00a0 I know that one you can buy separately, but it\u2019s been around since the PS3 days.\u00a0 It would\u2019ve also been neat if they went the extra mile and added other games, too.\u00a0 For instance, Metal Black isn\u2019t part of the Darius series, but it\u2019s made by the same team and has a lot of similarities.\u00a0 Also how about Space Invaders 95?\u00a0 That was a silly Space Invaders game, but one of the bosses was a parody of Darius with a seafood platter made up of the bosses from Darius!\u00a0 Anyway, I guess that since I\u2019m such a big Darius fan, my expectations of this collection were a lot higher than what we got.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Darius Cozmic Collection is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 You shoot spaceships and robot fish that explode when defeated.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, and younger gamers may find it a bit difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a huge fan of the Darius 2-D shooter series from Taito.\u00a0 But what is Darius?\u00a0 While it may look like a generic classic space shooter at first, it has some elements that helped split it apart from others in the arcade.\u00a0 One, a lot of the spaceships you battle are designed to look like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20240,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20238\/revisions\/20240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}