It has been a long while since I had the distinct pleasure of revisiting the 1990s. Thanks to ININ Games and publisher Taito, 1997 is back, baby! This time in HD and this time…well…it’s still hard as hell. Welcome back to the arcade shooter G-Darius, an example of what many quarters got you in a short amount of time. But a fun time.
Let’s dig right into this puppy.
Returning to the 1990s has never been so fun and frustrating, but mostly fun
G-Darius HD isn’t for the weak of heart. You can tell two things from it when it loads: It’s from the 90s because they didn’t know what to do with 3D gameplay yet, and it’s from the dying arcade era where difficulty and quarter pumping worked together. And did I mention this was a difficult game?
G-Darius HD is a straight-up arcade shooter in the strictest sense. You work on an X/Y axis and essentially shoot the shit out of whatever is in front of you. The main gameplay is simply going through a barrage of interstellar fish-like creatures (and some dinos, and some rocks, lots of things) to eventually make it to the last stage and beat the game. The problem? HAVE I MENTIONED THE GAME WAS DIFFICULT??? If it weren’t for having virtual quarters (L1) endlessly finding their way to my PlayStation after every three ships, I’m pretty sure I would have quit this game a long time ago.
Difficulty aside, occasionally, the gameplay will throw you a bone to make you forget about the insanity unfolding on the screen. You’ll find a specially colored set of ships that will provide you with more power-ups and provide you with capture balls. The power-ups aren’t uncommon for shooters, heck they’ve been around since the late 70s. The power-ups add more firepower to your ship, which means you get rid of enemies quicker. Once you die, those all get reset. Lucky us, right? It’s typical for arcade shooters.
The game also throws you capture balls. The capture balls are brilliant and very Galaga-esque, as you can capture enemy ships and use them to fight off enemies, thus adding more power to your arsenal in addition to the power-ups. I must review a Darius collection this coming week, so I expect to see something similar, but as it stands the CB inclusion is a neat feature and adds a bit of flavor to the experience. The balls pretty much work with most common enemies, as the bigger enemies will more than likely laugh it off. Although, I will add that I did capture a medium enemy, which absolutely was powerful as hell.
The game’s drive is its difficulty. Much like Dark Souls is the bar set for difficult adventure games nowadays, G-Darius is a good example of how difficult shooters were back in the day. People loved that shit, even if it meant pumping in five dollars’ worth of quarters in 45 minutes of gameplay. You always wanted to see how far you could get and how big of a score you could obtain. This game also follows that competitive suit by adding a ranking system, which apparently, I didn’t even scratch during my review adventure. I was awful at this game, but I made it far into it. But my score was just the pits.
The difficulty grows with bosses. When you’re not fighting a ba-zillion enemies on screen, the final bosses of each stage are terribly overpowered, even when you’re pumped up with power-ups. They make you feel accomplished after you spend 10-15 minutes fighting them (each) and motivate you to keep going. Again, this is pure arcade shooter type of difficulty. It’s pretty, but it’s insane.
Anyway, this is the crux of the gameplay and it works for 1997, and for those in this day and age that enjoy difficult tasks to achieve. The power-ups were a pleasure during all the dying, and a huge plus when it came to continuing playing the game.
What about that HD and 3D stuff?
G-Darius HD comes with two versions of the game, one that is in HD and one that is not. The HD version of the game is colorful, HD, and it looks and sounds great. While it is certainly not a remaster by any stretch of the imagination (why would you want that?), it still has a lot of visual personality, as well as a sense of adventure, as the 3D models were stuck in a 2D structure. Granted, Star Fox had been released at this point and Mario 3D was out in the wild (as was the first 3D adventure with Lara Croft – never forget she was first), the folks at Taito still weren’t thinking 3D quite yet, as they juggled 3D teases into an X/Y structure. But they made some creative models from what they could build and did their best to incorporate and fool folks into thinking there were some heavy 3D elements waiting for them. Such a 1997 thing to do.
Anyway…
Conclusion
G-Darius HD is a fun trip down memory lane and reminds us that arcade games knew how to eat up your quarters. It will certainly frustrate common gamers out there, but for nostalgia-seeking suckers like myself, it was fun frustration.
