Regarding this game's chronology and 'place' in the Darius timeline, this is the 'first' game in the Darius series. In the intro movies we discover that no, we don't face Belser anymore but
instead, even though their technology looks a lot like our old friends'. I'm guessing Belser ripped them off. The fish are also, strangely enough, called 'life forms'. More importantly, we discover that the good guys are the Amnelians, and are getting their asses handed to them in the true tradition of all shoot'em up intros/storylines. But wait....there's a significant change this time. Using the Thiima technology (after being knocked about in true shoot 'em up tradition), the Amnelians built our beloved Silver Hawk!! Now that's something. To top it off, instead of Proco and Tiat, we have Sameluck Raida and Lutia Feen who are on their way to fight a battle to decide the fate of yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah...you know the drill. Of course, there's the catch-phrase 'You will see the creation of new lives'. What are we at? An Evangelist mission? Bah. To avoid making this page too long, let me provide you with a transcript of the G-Darius manual (huge thanx to Skyknight for this one). Maybe I should stop now on this topic and start a separate G-Darius shrine. But later.
The Darius series was to stop at a high note for now, as this one's been the last NEW Darius game. Darius R doesn't count. This was the only Darius game to use 3D graphics- or rather 2.5D, since it still is strictly a horizontally scrolling shoot'em up. The upgrade is breath-taking in terms of the stages and especially the bosses (more on them later). The enemies are more or less the same old friends from Darius onwards, though they don't look so good when polygonised to me. The powerup system is unchanged, but the black hole bomb from Gaiden has been replaced with a capture ball which merges the sub-boss capture system of Gaiden with something from their 1991 game, Metal Black. Now, you can capture any enemy with it, which you can either detonate or use to charge up your Alpha Beam (more on this later), a devastating, DragonBall Z-ish blast which puts Golden Ogre and Titanic Lance's single flatulent blast to shame (as if you didn't rub it in before). Added to this is a more sophisticated scoring and ranking system. Getting Beams right and using them for the coup de grace can net you upto 1 million points. The ranking system is amusing- your 'greatness' is assigned a bird's name (Duck, Owl Crow, Swan, Eagle, Condor and Hawk from bottom to top) and a metal (Iron, Silver and Gold from bottom to top) (Thanx to Zach Keene for that info!).
Now comes the time for me to salivate at length on the bosses. Taito pulled out all the stops on this one. Each boss gets a mini-movie intro sequence where they make their appearance, the camera goes berzerk or they kick some serious ass, and the carnage begins. Believe me, staring down at Queen Fossil's maw is really something else. Of special note is Absolute Defender's entrance, where he appears as this blazing bolt of light and, in a scene straight out of Albator 84, annihilates a passing fishy craft (friendly fire?). The sober klaxon has gone, too; we now have a keening wail; certainly a step up from what we got in Gaiden. Each boss fills up more than a screen, and you have to nibble away at him, which makes for lengthy and more realistic takedowns. One thing which evens up the odds is the concept of the Alpha/Beta Beam duels. As I previously mentioned, using a capture ball can allow you to charge up the Alpha Beam. Well, the Thiimans, since you ripped them off, have Beta Beams. You can now have amazing beam-to-beam combat, and whichever beam is winning becomes bigger and bigger. At a point even DragonBall Z is put to shame!
Finally, G-Darius has an original boss for every stage. Woo hoo! The stages are also named after Greek letters, and each one's name begins with a G.
Some stages are split up into two areas after a point, and you sometimes get a variant of the same boss in each area in terms of colour and attack patterns. And so:
G-Darius Jap PSX:1,2
Home | Darius Games | Main Boss List | Links | Contact