The Darius thread, Especially created for our English fisherman friends

Considering the fact that our friend Icarus is planning to record some interesting Darius Gaiden runs and pheraps also some G Darius ones, and the fact that I like these games (a bit selfish from me, don't you think??? ), I'll open a thread in wich we can discuss about or post material concerning all the Darius games.


I don't play Darius games, since, after the bad finished Garegga\Ibara affair, i'm really absorbed by DDP DOJ, but I really like the Darius design, especially the backgrounds, and really love the "routing" system and the wild milkings at the bosses.


My favourite Darius game is "G Darius", and I like the most the cool giant bosses with theire special attack, and the Taito school mega-beam duels.


The bad thing is that I don't find any good replay run concerning this game, or any sources of information about it.


Icarus, coul'd you help with links and\or info about this?


Put also your personal thoughts about your favourites Darius games or your personal tactics, we are really interested


I don't think there are any Darius player on this board, but if someone wanted to join this thread, it woul'd be really appreciated.


See you soon!

For Darius Gaiden replays, there's a few up at Super Play, as well as two on YouTube featuring expert plays against Great Thing and Storm Causer.

There is one G-Darius superplay, and thats the 55mil world record replay taking the 'all down' route to Omicron to face Great Thing. I think its by a player named HARUKA. The replay itself isn't on Super Play at the moment, but I have seen it (its in my archives somewhere).

As for general strategies, I have a few observations:

1) There is always one extremely easy to clear route (all up), and one hard route (all down). Usually in Darius the easy route is the lowest scoring, and the hardest route is the highest scoring, but Darius Gaiden reverses the trend, with the hard, high scoring route going all up, and another hard but low scoring route going down.

2) All Darius games epitomise the no miss no bomb play, since you get a large amount of points from the end of game bonus. Darius Gaiden and G-Darius also features the 'Captains Captured' bonus, where you get bonuses for capturing a stage midboss.

3) As listed in Rando's Darius Gaiden game discussion thread, rank is determined by your Shot's powered up state - the higher the Shot power, the higher the rank. As usual, rank makes bullets faster and both enemies and bosses stronger and harder to destroy.

4) In both Darius Gaiden and G-Darius, Great Thing is the boss to aim if you want the highest score, as GT is a milking boss: in Gaiden, you milk the spiral missiles it fires (300k pts each) while in G-Dar you use Alpha and Counter Beams to destroy the regenerating turrets at adorn GT's body.

5) There is a Japanese guide website for G-Darius somewhere, but I'll be damned it I can find it in my Favourites list.

6) G-Darius is a little different in scoring practices. You get bonus points for destroying enemy formations in their entirety, but they are multiplied by a factor dependent on what attack you used to destroy the last in the formation with - Shot is an x1, bullet from captured enemy is x2, lvl1 Alpha Beam is x4 and so on. This makes planning your attacks and knowledge of enemy formations very important in high scoring runs, as well as constant use of Capture Balls and the Alpha Beams they provide.

7) As with all old-school games, there is heavy use of safe spots to avoid enemy and boss attacks. Learn them!

Hmmm... thats all I can provide for now. Feel free to ask questions, and I might be able to remember more. For now, I'll be off trying for a Darius Gaiden no-miss one-bomb play. ^_-

Edited by Icarus_ - 2/8/2006, 03:32

Please, I woul'd be very happy to see this run... how can I have it on my PC?

If I can find it in my archives (50+ CD/DVD worth of replays downloaded/captured over the past 10 years) I'll upload it for you. ^_-

I also have an old 17mil ALL No Miss run I captured over 7 years ago, taking the all up route, as well.

Thanks

I wonder how you manage to find all this material...


From how much time you play shooter games? And, if I'm not unpolite, how old are you?

There are a lot of places to look. ^_-
The most time consuming way is to type the Japanese name of the game you want to find a replay for in Google, and sift through the pages. Boring. Alternatively you can try Japanese replay sites such as B-Board and the now-dead Hameko.

Or you can use peer-to-peer filesharing programs such as Share, Winny and eMule.


I play for a couple of hours at a time, when I can be bothered. And I'm 25. ^_-

Edited by Icarus_ - 2/8/2006, 03:40

Scuse me, you had misunderstood: I intended to say: from how many years you play shoot'emups?

Ahh, I gotcha now. ^_-

I've been playing games since I was six, and the first game I owned was Stargate on the Atari 2600. So about 19 years, accurately. The first time I started playing arcade shootemups, however, was when I was 14 years old (about 11 years ago), with R-Type, Gradius and Raiden.

By the way, the Darius Gaiden replay is coming tonight. I ALL Cleared the game about an hour ago with 10.5mil - no miss, one bomb, 3 Captains captured - and the .avi is busy encoding as we speak. ^_-

I'll find and upload the G-Darius replays later this week.

Cheers, I'm waiting to watch them... tomorrow.


Tonight my friends Giovanna and Roberto want to go play minigolf.... it will probably be an evening full of laughs


Being on topic: you played PCB or conversion? Used autofire or your-finger's-fury??

Ah, for the G Darius runs, I think if you post them also on shmups forum you make many people really happy

I used MAME with autofire options enabled. I have the Saturn version, but I don't play it much as you have to keep entering a code to enable the autofire in that version. I think autofire is important in Darius Gaiden as it helps to kill bosses faster, and to assist in capturing Captains quicker.

I use autofire in all shootemups that I play, as I hate having hand pains after playing.

Yes, it's a huge time indeed!


And yes, I think myself autofire it's important: I can really emulate hi fire rates autofire-like with my hands, but this way I risk bad infiammations... So autofire is good.


But I tought Darius Gaiden were bad emulated in MAME... I usually play the Taito memories version (no autofire ) but I'd like to play with MAME plus.


It woul'd be cool if you posted the rom and the emu version with the coming soon video


Ok ok, sorry if I'm a "requesting machine"

Okay, here we go.

Player: Icarus // Darius Gaiden ALL, Zone V route, 10.5mil (DIVX - 175MB)
- YouSendIt Mirror
- Super-Play.co.uk Mirror



This is a no-miss, one-bomb ALL. I took the stage route ABDGLQV which I find to be quite decent scoring. There's at least 1.4mil left to get in my run, by retaining that used bomb, capturing the last three Captains, and milking particuar bosses.

I can post the emulator and input file on request.


Its not that long. ^_-

And MAME emulates Darius Gaiden extremely well. I prefer the Saturn version, but I dont like having to enter a code for my autofire when I can set it up permanently in MAME32+ or EK-MAME32+.

Great!


I'm waiting to see your run...



I probably use a bad version... coul'd you post yours please?