Lost In Translation/Darius

This page is a stub for arcade games that are part of the Lost In Translation series using information based on MAME (version 0.113u2).
For an example of preferred content and layout please refer to Out Run or The Ninja Warriors.

Darius
Manufacturer	Taito Corporation Japan
Released	1986
Control Method	8-way Joystick 2 Button(s)
Main CPU	(3x) 68000 (@ 8.000 MHz) Z80 (@ 4.000 MHz)
Sound CPU	Stereo (2x) YM2203 (@ 4.000 MHz) MSM5205 (@ 384.000 kHz) (18x) Volume Filter
Video Details	Raster (Horizontal) 288 x 224 pixels 60.00 Hz 8,192 Palette colours
Screens	3
ROM Info	35 ROMs 2,001,920 bytes (1.91 MiB)
MAME ID	darius · dariuse · dariusj · dariuso

About The Game

Darius is an horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up and was one of the first arcade games to use a 3-screen display. The actual resolution of the game is 3x(288x224) or 864x224 giving a very long horizontal display, hence some of the conversions opting to display the game in the widescreen format.

In the game, the player flies an ornate fighter craft called a Silver Hawk. The craft is equipped with 2 attack weapons : Missile (forward-firing standard gun) and Bomb (drops from the bottom of the ship). The Silver Hawk is also equipped with the 'Arm' (armor); a green energy shield that can absorb enemy attacks without harm to the ship.

During the course of the levels the player must navigate the terrain and battle a variety of fighter craft, ground vehicles, turrets, and other obstacles. At the end of every level, players are greeted with the obligatory end-of-level boss. The bosses in Darius are often in the form of mechanical aquatic animals, such as fish or squid. If the player defeats the boss, the tunnel splits into two and the player must decide whether to take the upper or lower tunnel, both of which lead to a different stage. This allows many different paths to be taken through the game.

Power-ups can be obtained by shooting enemies of a certain color, with the power-ups appearing in the form of colored bubbles. Each color corresponds to one of the ship's three weapons :

• Red - Missile
• Green - Bomb
• Blue - Arm

If the player powers up a weapon more than seven times, the weapon changes to a new, more powerful version. This then becomes the player's default weapon, and can be powered up further. There are also two other colors of power-up bubble, white and orange; which can be obtained by shooting at certain sections of the terrain; unfortunately, there are no visual clues as to where these may be on any given level. These hidden power-ups offer the following :

• White - Gives a score bonus.
• Orange - Smart bomb that kills all on-screen enemies.

Trivia

Darius was unique in the fledgling genre for having a game screen three times longer than the usual size, and thus requiring three screens to be arranged side-by-side in order to play.

The player flies a small spacecraft called a Silver Hawk, which is also distinctive in being highly detailed in design - indeed, Taito devised mock blueprints for it. The Silver Hawks are a trademark of the series.

Another trademark of the series is the unique branching level structure. The levels are arranged in a large binary tree, and at the end of each level, the player must choose one of 2 paths to follow. This means that there are many different paths that can be taken through the game.

The heroes' names in Darius series 'PROCO' and 'TIAT' backwards spell 'TAITO CORP'.

The first stage music is a remix of the "Metal Soldier Isaac II" intro music (1985).

Pony Canyon / Scitron released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Darius - PCCB-00093) on 21/08/1992.

Zuntata Records released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Zuntata History L'ab-normal 1st - ZTTL-0038) on 01/04/1999.

Tips And Tricks

Progression Of The Bubbles

• Weapons (red) : Bullets --> Lasers --> Wave
• Shields (blue) : Green --> Silver --> Gold
• Bombs (green) : Single --> Dual --> Quad

Miscellaneous Bubbles

• Points (grey): Points
• Extra-ship : Bomb certain key spots on the terrain.

Power Levels And Weapons

There are 8 power levels (0-7) within each armament category.Your weapons, shields, and bombs improve as you go from 0-7 :

• The shots move faster and therefore recharge more quickly.
• Bullets increase in number and waves increase in height, thus destroying more enemies at once. Waves, once fired, will go through anything until leaving the screen to the right.
• Shields : They just recharge, but the better classes of shields absorb more hits. Gold shields will also protect your ship from collisions with objects as well as shots, but on certain screens that have lots of little squeezeways, gold shields can actually kill you by ricocheting your ship back and forth until you die.
• Bombs : They get 'smarter' in seeking out targets.

How to complete the game

• Completing the game is easiest with triple bullets.
• Explore the different paths this way, and when you're ready for a challenge, try to get wave.
• Lasers are not weapons so much as a handicap you have to endure while building to wave.
• Recommended paths (easiest) : A-C-E-H-M-R-X

Series

1. Darius (1986)
2. Darius II (1989)
3. Darius Twin (1991, Nintendo Super Famicom)
4. Darius Force (1993, Nintendo Super Famicom)
5. Darius Gaiden - Silver Hawk (1994)
6. G-Darius (1997)
7. G-Darius ver.2 (1997)

Staff

Directed And Produced By

Toshio Kohno

Game Designers

Toshio Konho

Akira Fujita

Kazuya Mikata

Programmers

Ken Hasegama

Takashi Kuriyama

Hideaki Tomioka

Tohru Sugawara

Hidenori Sasatani

Hideki Hashimoto

Art Designers

Tetsuroh Kitagawa

Yoshihiro Wakita

Junji Yarita

Yukio Ishikawa

Kohzoh Igarashi

Genya Kuriki

Taira Sanuki

Masami Kikuchi

Mitsuru Ogama

Mechanical Engineers

Takeki Nakamura

Eiji Kubota

Cabinet Designers

Takeo Shiraishi

Hisayoshi Nakane

Natuki Hirosawa

Hardware Designers

Takashi Ohhada

Syuji Kubota

Seigo Sakamoto

Music Composers

Yasuhiko Tanaka

Hisayoshi Ogura

Naoto Yagishita

Tsukasa Nakamura

Eikichi Takahashi

Masahiko Takaki

Cabinet and Artwork

• 

  Darius arcade cabinet.

• 

  Darius flyer.

• 

  Electrocoin's Darius flyer.

Ports

Box art for The Edge's port of Darius.

Consoles

NEC PC-Engine ("Darius Alpha")

NEC PC-Engine CD ("Super Darius")

Sega Master System

Sega Mega Drive ("Sagaia")

Nintendo Game Boy Advance ("Darius R")

Computers

Atari ST (1989)

Commodore Amiga ("Darius+", 1989, The Edge)

Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1990, "Darius+")

Sharp X68000

Soundtrack Releases

Album Name	Catalogue No.	Released	Publisher	Comments
Game Music Festival ~Super Live '92~	PCCB-00099	1992-10-21	Pony Canyon, Inc.	CD version.
Zuntata Live '90 -G.S.M. Taito-	PCCB-00045	1990-10-21	Pony Canyon/Scitron	CD version.
Darius the Omnibus -Generation-	ZTTL-0008	1997-03-28	Zuntata Records	CD version.
Darius	PCCB-00093	1992-08-21	Pony Canyon Inc.	CD version.
Zuntata Live 1997 -Cineteque Rave- (Visual File)	ZTTV-0001	1997-11-21	Zuntata Records	Released on VHS.
ZUNTATA LIVE 1998 "güten Talk" from the earth ~AUDIO FILE~	ZTTL-0031	1998-10-21	Zuntata Records	2 CD version.
ZUNTATA LIVE 1998 "güten Talk" from the earth ~VISUAL FILE~	N/A	1998-11-10	Zuntata Records	Released on VHS.
ZUNTATA HISTORY L'ab-normal 1st	ZTTL-0038	1999-04-01	Zuntata Records	CD version.
THE VERY BEST OF OGR GALLERy ~Concepts~	ZTTL-0049	1999-12-18	Zuntata Records	2 CD version.
THE VERY BEST OF Mar. GAME MUSIC II ~Dawn Chronicle~	ZTTL-0053	2000-06-21	Zuntata Records	CD version.
Darius Premium Box -Rebirth-	ZTMD-0001~5	2005-05-25	Zuntata Records	5 CD version.
Darius - TAITO GAME MUSIC VOL.2	28XA-166	1987-06-25	Alfa Records	CD version.
Game Music Now & Then	SCDC-00292~3	2003-12-17	Scitron Digital Content	2 CD version.
Darius - TAITO GAME MUSIC VOL.2	ALC-22912	1987-06-25	Alfa Records	Cassette version.
Darius - TAITO GAME MUSIC VOL.2	ALR-22912	1987-06-25	Alfa Records	Vinyl version.
PC Engine's World of Darius	APCG-4001	1989-11-21	APOLLON	CD version.
Darius Remix	SRIN-1037	2007-12-29	Sweep Records	CD version.
Game Music Festival Live, Summer '93 ~OFFICIAL BOOTLEG CASSETTE~	N/A	1993-01-01	Pony Canyon/Scitron	Cassette version.
Scitron 10th Anniversary Special CD Sampler	DMCZ-300098	1998-01-01	Scitron Label	2 CD version.
Gaesen Oh - Scitron Game Music Mega Mix Vol.1	KGCD-0001	1994-01-01	Pony Canyon/Scitron	CD version.
Darius	ZTTL-9006	2007-10-29	Zuntata Records	Digital download only.
TAITO GAME MUSIC	ZTTL-1003	2004-09-24	Zuntata Records	CD version.
Beep Special Project - Video Game Music - Second Sono Sheet	N/A	1987-01-01	Softbank Publishing	Vinyl version.

Sound Comparison

Platform	Song Titles								Sound Source
Arcade	"Captain Neo (Space Cave)"	"Boss 1"	"Round Clear"	"Inorganic Beat (City)"	"Boss 2"	"Cosmic Air Way (Mountain Region)"	"Boss 3"	"Choas -Main Theme- (Van Allen Belt)"	M1 v0.7.8a6

Platform	Song Titles (Continued...)								Sound Source
Arcade	"Boss 4"	"The Sea (Undersea Base)"	"Boss 5"	"Boss 6"	"Boss 7"	"Ending"	"Name"	"Over"	M1 v0.7.8a6

External Links

• Sinclair ZX Spectrum version of Darius+ at the World of Spectrum

References

The contents of this page are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
The sources used include MAME (version 0.113u2) and history.dat (revision 1.28 - 2008-10-18).
Please see http://www.arcade-history.com for credits.