Darius (1986)
Super Darius (1991)
Sagaia (Game Boy) (1991)
Darius Twin (1991) (as Hyper Greatthing)
Darius Gaiden (1994)
G-Darius (1997)(as G.T.)
Appears as a sub-boss in:
Nil
Relatives: Great Force
Cameos:
A pink sperm whale, bereft of cannons, is the first stage boss of the entertaining platformer The New Zealand Story released by Taito
in 198X. A relative of Great Thing also makes an appearance as a boss in the dojin shoot'em up Messier-The Ultimate Destructive Device (best described as Thunderforce meets Darius).
Great Thing is, without second thoughts, the archetypal Huge Darius Battleship, in name and design. He very fittingly is the last boss you face in every game he's appeared, except Darius Twin (but we can overlook that). The guys at Taito very certainly had the creations of Leiji Matsumoto in mind when they thought this one up. They probably saw some episodes of Uchuu Senkan Yamato, read Moby Dick and then took a cue from the designers of Kill-O-Zap guns to whip Great Thing up. Of course, this being the Darius series, they had to call him Great Thing.
End result: The second wickedest-looking boss in the Darius series who will make you wet your pants before firing a single shot.
Great Thing at work in Super Darius and Darius. As you can see, he never really lets up and always uses more than one attack at a time.
Tips: Ouch. The worst part about Great Thing is that he always throws everything he's got at you! Darius Gaiden. He does throw it in a kind of order. First of all he fires his front cannons and launches anchor thingies from his head. Then, he fires his big laser cannon and a killer whale from his mouth with explodes into a three-bullet arc aimed at you. He then cuts loose with all his anchor thingies (from the top AND bottom), and may or may not fire a drill missile from his forehead. All of this comes pretty much back to back. As long as you don't stay too long in one spot, you will survive. But keep a special eye out for the killer whale! A good place to be is roughly in line with the mouth so that you can blow up the killer whale as soon as it surfaces.
In Darius Twin, Great Thing got a 'Hyper' tagged on to his name and received the serial number GG0D (religious overtones?). Essentially he is the same old cachalot, except that he now has a slow circular path he moves about (which is how I built his) 'complete' portrait). This means that you don't always face his full wrath, which is something of a good thing. But don't relax...his attack is as relentless as before. And, as in Spuer Darius, since the screen is smaller and (this is unique to HGT) he moves all over it, you have less elbow room and can get crushed by him. But don't be discouraged too much.
Darius Gaiden's Great Thing is easily the worst so far. The battle seems more exciting to me as it takes place over a rapidly-scrolling skyline (Darius'?) which PUMPS ME UP! Strictly speaking, he's Great Thing Mk.II according to this guy Kurabar from Taito. But who's counting. Guns, guns, guns are what Great Thing starts things off with. He has some regular straight lasers plus little fishes (descendants of the killer whales of before) which fire their own straight laser. Try and stay in line with them as they require a few shots to go down and their lasers can catch you with your pants down. One of the cannons on Great Thing's back then sprays you continously with lasers. Weave a bit so that there is place between each shot/stream of shots to move through. Eventually you will see his middle cannon sort of warm up. At this point, try and stay as far to the left and high as possible too. Then, the cannon fires a helical line-of-death laser a bit slowly so that you can move below it. Now move forward and upwards slowly and jerkily so that the laser follows you as such. It probably fires more for a time period, rather than to make a full sweep (if you've played Aria of Sorrow Death's pillars of light work the same way). OK. You then move to his tail, where he throws anchor thingies and bullet arcs at you. As Great Thing pulls back, he then fires two balls from his ventral cannon which blow up buildings below (not smashing them with his tail out of displeasure- sorry!) and the debris can harm you. Fortunately it's not too easy to get hit with it. Then come the drills as before, but they release nasty bullet arcs if you blow them up.
He then starts up a WICKED 90-degree laser from the big cannon above his eye. It is very important to stay above him while you dodge it, otherwise he can crush you from above. Eventually,you fly over him and a cannon near to his tail fires three laser streams while he piles on the anchor thingies. At the same time there are the pulsed bullet thingies from Neon Light Illusion to contend with too (*sniff*). This is pretty much his first attack cycle, which lasts as long as most of his cannons are still on him. Once all of them have gone, he then starts to shoot a massive seven-bullet arc stream from new cannons in his side; however, it can be easily dodged by simply flying over his head and bombing the crap out of him.
Things move back to the tail and he fires homing laser (the big twisty beam type) after homing laser. Not difficult to dodge, just tiresome. And these attacks cycle almost endlessly, with some drills or little fishes (in larger quantities than before, natch) from Great Thing's head to liven up the monotony. It seemed to me that he had far too many hit points here. You are likely to be harassed by the rotating cubes here, and this can really cramp you with the tail attacks. However, eventually:
Real-Life Inspiration: The sperm(aceti) whale(Physeter macrocephalus). Immortalised in Moby Dick, the sperm whale isn't the largest whale (that be the blue whale, arr!) but is the biggest one with teeth. It was and is still (in spite of Greenpeace people's efforts) hunted for its blubber, ambergris and whalebone (maybe not any more). It lives at a depth deep enough to lunch on giant squid (see Cuttle Fish and Neon Light Illusion), somewhat famously. To get a wealth of information about the sperm whale, albeit dated by 150-odd years, get a copy of Moby Dick. Not a bad book at all, and it's probably free on the Internet somewhere.
(Source:A lot of partially digested readings.)
