PS3

G-Darius

Shooter

Overview

G-Darius is a horizontally scrolling shooter arcade video game released by Taito in 1997. It is the fourth arcade installment of the Darius series and the first with three-dimensional polygonal graphics. A port to the PlayStation was published as G Darius.

Much like previous installments in the Darius series, G-Darius is a horizontally scrolling shooter. While the game uses three-dimensional polygonal graphics, the gameplay is two-dimensional. The player controls a spaceship named the Silver Hawk and must battle enemies and avoid obstacles throughout the game's stages (referred to as "zones" in the game). The ship is armed with forward-firing missiles, small aerial bombs, and a protective force field. These can be upgraded by power-ups, in the form of large orbs, that are dropped by specially-colored enemies when they are destroyed.

G-Darius is a prequel story that revolves around a conflict between the humanoids of Amelia and cyborg/chimera biovessels known as the "Thiima" (meant to mean simply "deliverer of death"). The Thiima had been aroused by the Amnelian army's use of the weapon A.N. (All-Nothing) to annihilate the world Blazer, whom Amelia had been at war with over jurisdiction over the moon Mahsah. Determined to protect their existence, and long ago programmed to protect the universe from just such threats as A.N., the Thiima swarmed Amelia. Although the armed forces were badly ravaged, Amnelian scientists and engineers were able to make use of both A.N. and reverse-engineered Thiiman technology/life systems to create the Silver Hawk fighters.

G-Darius was ported to the PlayStation as G Darius and released in 1998 for Japan on April 9 by Taito, in Europe on September 11, and in the United States on September 17 by THQ. The PlayStation port is based on the "ver. 2" arcade release. The original arcade version of G-Darius was later re-released on the PlayStation 2 port of Taito Legends 2, a compilation consisting of several arcade games by Taito. The Windows 95 version, based on the PlayStation port, was published by CyberFront Corporation, MediaKite, and Sourcenext in 2000 to 01.

The PlayStation port received favorable reviews as reported by the review aggregation website GameRankings. Next Generation said that the game was "fun for those fogies who can stomach it, but the average gamer will be bored to death". In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 29 out of 40. Also in Japan, Game Machine listed the arcade version in their August 15, 1997, issue as being the fourth most-successful arcade game of the month. Five issues later (November 1), however, the magazine demoted it to being the tenth most-successful arcade game of the month.