Come 1989, and Taito released a sequel to Darius. Called, obviously, Darius II or Sagaia outside Japan, it too was released on the three-screen format of its predecessor, as well as on a two-screen cabinet. It's a hundred years since the first game, and the Darians have left Darius for the planet Oruga/Orga or Olga (as in Korbut(sic)). It so happens that Belser is picking on the solar system and, more importantly, Earth. Guess who flies to the rescue? Proco Jr. and Tiat Young . From the Sun to Jupiter. In 1994, this pitch would get queered by claiming that the Darians emigrated to Vadis and not Oruga. Arrrghhh...multliverse time?

Darius II was in many ways, a step up from Darius, and introduced some refinements which would stay till the end. You could see the whole layout of stages after completing one, so you could decide where to go on the big scale of things. You would also respawn when killed. However, powerups came by shooting a certain chain of enemies, and always came in a certain order: missile, bomb, arm, a new kind of straight lasers, a score bonus and 1-up! Powering up was faster too. This system sort of survived in the two SNES incarnations of Darius, but not beyond it. Lots (if not all) of Darius' bosses resurfaced as sub-bosses here!

Finally, the bosses earned code names too. This survived only in Darius Twin, though. This game also contained the immortal line: "I always wanted a thing called tuna sashimi.". Curiously there wasn't (and never has been) a tuna boss in the Darius series. Speaking of bosses, here they are:




Arcade PCB pix: 1,2
OST pix:1,2
45 minute superplay :1




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