Ah, Darius. The perennial favorite of old tired shmuppers pining for the glory days of 16 bit shmups. Anyone who’s been playing these sorts of games since they came about played Darius, first in the arcades and later on a wide variety of consoles. What they tend to forget though, is how ridiculously hard these games are. Unlike the balanced and precise shmups we get today, games like the Darius series were heavily skewed towards obliterating you in as short a time as possible and they were quite good at it.
First off, I suck at the Darius games. They’re tough and I’ve never really gotten the hang of them. That being said, I play a lot of shmups and the Darius Cozmic Collection Console from Taito and ININ Games was something I’d been anticipating for a while. I was expecting a rough go. But I wasn’t expecting what I actually got.
Let’s look at what’s included in the collection. There are actually only four games included, Darius II, Darius Twin, Darius Force, and Darius Plus. Sure, it looks like there are more, but they are just multiple different versions of the same game. Darius II was ported to the US as Sagaia on the Sega Genesis, and also ported to the Sega Master System as Sagaia and both are included. Darius Twin came over with its title unchanged, and both SFC and SNES versions are included. Darius Force became Super Nova upon its us release and had some minor changes, and Darius Alpha is a boss rush version of Darius Plus for the PC Engine, neither of which was ever released in North America. It should be noted that Darius Alpha is ridiculously rare and fetches prices of literally thousands of dollars. A complete copy recently sold for over $1700 US, and this collection is a VERY cost effective way to play that incredibly rare title.
For some reason, Darius Gaiden isn’t included in this collection, but it is on the Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade, which we reviewed here. I can only assume that’s due to the difficulty in adapting the Saturn’s dual graphics processors for easy emulation, but it’s still disappointing. As you can see, overall there is a lot of content here, but it’s worth examining what you’re actually getting. In terms of settings options, a key issue for collections of this type, this is a relatively bare bones offering. You can change the aspect ratio to either fit to screen, full screen, normal, or pixel perfect, but there’s no personal tweaking. You can turn scan lines and smoothing on and off, turn on or off the backgrounds on the border of the screen, and you can remap the controls. That’s it. Sure the games themselves allow you a bit of control over autofire, difficulty, and number of extra lives, but not much. Nothing has been altered, changed, or modernized, and I mean nothing at all. You get the exact experience you would from the original cartridges.
In the case of the Sega Master System version of Sagaia, that’s actually pretty sad. All the frame dropouts, slowdown, and other issues inherent in that version of the game are entirely intact. The difficulty is ridiculous on it too, making it virtually unplayable, even on a large TV. This is a bizarre choice, as there could have been a bit of tweaking to at least eliminate the massive graphics glitches, but apparently that’s more historically accurate, so why not just toss an emulator on and keep everything intact right? It’s less work. That’s kind of the whole Darius Cosmic Collection Console Edition in a nutshell too. Here’s the exact emulation of the old games you vaguely remember. There’s no historical retrospective here like there was on the excellent SNK 40th Anniversary Collection we reviewed here a while back. There are no modernized remixed modes updated for modern play styles or cleaning up old, dated choices in enemy patterns and level designs. There’s just the emulation and a menu system.
Sure, there are a few nods here. There’s an internet scoreboard and the ability to make and watch replays, your own and others. There’s a digital manual. And there’s, well, nothing else. Music is solid in the Darius series, better than some of the actual games, I’d argue. But there’s no music player. Nothing. This is one of the most straightforward collections I’ve ever seen. From a technical standpoint, everything runs incredibly smoothly, the emulation is spot on, and everything is identical to the original games as much as possible outside of having the original controllers and a CRT TV. But that’s not really enough these days.
When you look at the individual gameplay of the Darius series, some games stand out more than others. The games themselves are a wide variety of awesome, meh, and complete shlock in Darius Cozmic Collection Console edition. Sagaia for the Master System is simply garbage. Darius II is actually a solid game with good graphics and an excellent difficulty balance and curve, while the US version, Sagaia, is a bit off. The Japanese definitely got the better version of the game there. Darius Twin was fairly similar for both the US and the Japanese versions and it’s honestly almost confusing why both versions are on this collection. Darius Force is probably the worst of the bunch after Sagaia for SMS, with deaths dragging you back to checkpoints and the slowest load times. By far, the stand-out inclusions in the Cozmic collection are Darius Plus and Darius Alpha, and even those aren’t the greatest. In fact, the introductory paragraph actually derides Darius Plus for being a downgraded version of Super Darius, which is of course, not included in the collection and was originally released on the PC Engine CD-ROM in Japan. Regardless, the color palette and clean lines of both Darius Plus and Darius Alpha are absolutely great and the game looks nice, although the amount of space you actually have on screen, especially in boss fights, is a little bizarre, leading to some tough battles.
Alternate modes that were hidden in the original games are included, such as Boss Endurance Mode in Darius Force and Special Mode in Darius II which is not included in the US release. Darius Alpha itself is simply a special version boss rush as well, but it was sold separately in limited quantities (under a thousand copies printed) so is on its own rather than included in a sub-menu like the other special modes.
On the Switch, the collection runs great. However, it should be noted that in undocked mode, Darius games are almost entirely unplayable, with their tiny enemies, fast bullets, and the small screen of the Switch. Sure, it’s better than trying to play Darius Burst on the Vita, but not much better. I found myself squinting at the screen and swearing at most of the games excluding Darius Plus and Darius II. Even on full-screen mode, it was a tough go for some of these oldies in portable mode.
Overall, Darius Cozmic Collection Console Edition is a very mixed bag. It includes all the versions of the games it states, but in very vanilla presentations with no remixes or thought put into the collection itself. It’s just a big emulator that gives you various versions of four games, and if you’re a hardcore Darius fan, unlike me, that’ll be pretty satisfying, especially if you don’t own some of the pricier titles. The lack of Darius Gaiden (Sega Saturn) and G-Darius (PS1) are notable, especially since this is supposed to be a console collection and it’s not like those are huge file sizes these days. Darius Gaiden (arcade verison) is a solid game and is included in the Arcade collection, and an HD version of G-Darius has just been announced on a forthcoming third collection, Darius Cozmic Relevation, along with the recently released Darius Burst: Another Chronicle EX+, which only came out a few years ago and was released as an extra in Darius Burst Chronicle Saviors for PS4, Vita, and Steam. With the price point of Darius Cozmic Collection Console Edition, it’s hard to take it or any of these releases seriously. $45 is too much to ask for a bare bones collection of emulated shmups of dubious quality, no matter how clean the interface and fast the load times. This is an overpriced, underwhelming collection that would be worth picking up if it were around the $15 mark or so, but at its current price, it’s only worthwhile for the most hardcore of Darius fans and better avoided overall.
This review was based on a digital copy of Darius Cozmic Collection Console Edition provided by the publisher. It was played in both docked and undocked modes. All pictures are actual screenshots. Darius Cozmic Collection Console Edition is also available for the PS4. I have learned from playing it that I still don’t like Darius, but hey, you might, and if you do, check it out, because the games actually run quite well. Personally, I’d avoid it, but enjoy!
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