Steel Spine

Appears as a boss in:

Sagaia (1989)
Super Darius (1991)

Appears as a sub-boss in:

Super Darius II (1993)


Relatives: Nil.


You don't often come across the throw-everything-at-ya type of boss in Darius games; the best example here is Great Thing. Another not-so-mean-as-hell boss cut from the same cloth is Steel Spine. Taito again took a cue from Douglas Adams and made this nasty globe bristling with wicked-looking turrets and cannon for our own delectation. I suppose the happy pinks were just to give him an attitude problem.




The 'orbs' spin pretty nicely for 1989, but don't look at them too long. They take quite a few hits to go.


Tips:Sagaia offers you Steel Spine once you take out the mouth of Alloy Lantern and enter into a faintly Gigereqsue cavern. Steel Spine kicks things off by firing two heat-seeker missiles at you which are no trouble at all. His many cannons then fire off in a vague outward spiral timing. At the same time, he has these embryos that keep on spinning inwards and outwards, never too dangerous but always taking hits. They only start to blow up much later in the game. Following this, he fires several long laser beams at you and the orbs suddenly come in much closer to you. They then spin around ellpitically and try to knock you out much faster. But, no sweat.



The cycle more or less repeats itself. The weak point is the mouth, though the fins can come off (as seen above). When they do, the screen flashes white though I don't know if a suitable BANG accompanies it. As you wear him down, the embryos will get destroyed as well and don't regenerate. he still has his own attacks, so don't stay directly in line with his mouth until he starts to fall apart.





Super Darius gives you the luxury of doing damage to Steel Spine anywhere upon his person. The orbs and heatseekers have gone but have been adequately replaced. Things kick off with the usual longish laser beam (pic at beginning of page-ouch), following which Spineman throws the damn kitchen sink at you. Roughly, his weapons come in this order:needle lasers from front and above, bullets from the three parallel cannons below and anchor thingies from below. Since it's a pretty continuous attack, you may be kept in a tighter spot for this guy. But he takes fewer hits to kill than his Sagaia counterpart.


Rating:

Colour Scheme:	(Darius) 77% (Super Darius) 65%
Design:	87%
Attacks:	(Sagaia) 81% (Super Darius) 74%
Name:	71%

Real-Life Inspiration: I'd say it's a porcupinefish, a rather harmless-looking spiky fish which blows itself up into a more nasty-looking thing when scared or threatened. Steel Spine represents the puffed-up porcupinefish fairly well. For the record, he looks the most like the slender-spined porcupinefish (Diodon nicthemerus).



Home | Darius Games | Main Boss List | Links | Contact