Taito’s Darius series (of which Sagaia is a part) has always been regarded by the wider gaming public as somehow lagging behind the other big-name horizontal shooting series. As a steadfast supporter of the games, I’ve long thought of this as a disheartening and near-criminal injustice, but to be perfectly honest, the popular view is all too understandable. The first two Darius titles relied on their innovative triple-screen displays and their GIGANTIC SPACE FISH to impress arcade-goers in the late 80s, and upon revisiting them today, most players find them to be rather staid and sedate affairs with unadventurous whack-a-mole level design. It took 1994’s Darius Gaiden and 1997’s G-Darius to really prove the worth of the series to most shoot-em-up aficionados, but they certainly didn’t lay to rest the ghosts of its reputation. The truly disheartening thing about the relative unpopularity of the original games, though, is that it’s meant that scant few people have been exposed to the wonders of their music.
It seems Taito understand this well enough, as they’ve been busy releasing a slew of the Darius soundtrack and remix CDs on the iTunes service, with the soundtrack to the Game Boy version of Sagaia being among the most recent. But is this release likely to win the series any new fans?
Click the jump to find out! (more…)