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darius: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Darius (c) 1986 Taito.

A horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up that was unique at the time for featuring a game screen that was 3 times wider than the conventional size, with the arcade cabinet utilizing 3 CRT screens to accommodate it.

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.

- TECHNICAL -

Prom Stickers : A96

Main CPU : (2x) 68000 (@ 8 Mhz)

Sound CPU : (2x) Z80 (@ 4 Mhz)

Sound Chips : (2x) YM2203 (@ 4 Mhz), MSM5205 (@ 384 Khz), (18x) Volume (@ 384 Khz)

Players : 2

Control : 8-way joystick

Buttons : 2

- TRIVIA -

Even if titlescreen says 1986, Darius was released in February 1987 in Japan.

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

Weapons : 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)

3. Darius Gaiden - Silver Hawk (1994)

4. G-Darius (1997)

5. G-Darius ver.2 (1997)

6. Darius Burst (2009, Sony PSN)

7. Darius Burst - Another Chronicle (2010)

- 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

- PORTS -

* 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)

Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1990, "Darius+")

Sharp X68000

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.37b11 [David Graves, Jarek Burczynski]

Artwork available

WIP:

- 0.136u1: Fabio Priuli added driver data struct and save states to Darius.

- 0.131u1: MooglyGuy merged memory maps in Darius.

- 9th July 2008: Mr. Do - Cleaned up the gray part of the Darius bezel.

- 0.106u9: Aaron Giles added "left half" and "right half" to the Darius layouts so you can stretch three screens over two, though you need to explicitly set them either in the UI or using the -view0 and -view1 parameters on the command line.

- 0.106u8: Aaron Giles added multiscreen support (3x 288x224) to the Darius driver.

- 0.93u1: Aaron Giles fixed crash in Darius.

- 0.93: Added 18x Volume_Filter.

- 0.88: Adjusted YM2203 and MSM5205 volume in Darius (thanks to Mame32Plus).

- 0.72: Acho A. Tang cleaned up the Darius video hardware emulation.

- 21st April 2002: Gerardo Oporto fixed some dipswitch settings in Darius and Warrior Blade.

- 17th April 2002: Hiromitsu Shioya modified the sound CPU bank changing in the Darius driver.

- 0.37b14: Added user1 proms ($0, 400, 800 - currently unused). Added 'Continue' dipswitch.

- 22nd March 2001: David Graves added state saving support to the Darius drivers, but it still needs some work.

- 3rd March 2001: David Graves added new PROMs to the Darius driver.

- 16th February 2001: David Graves added sprite/tile priority to the Darius driver.

- 0.37b11: David Graves and Jarek Burczynski added Darius (World) and clones (Japan), (Japan old version) and (Extra) (Japan).

- 22nd December 2000: Hiromitsu Shioya fixed sprite colors and sound volume in the Darius driver.

- 20th December 2000: Hiromitsu Shioya fixed sound emulation and background positioning in the Darius driver.

- 13th December 2000: David Graves sent in a fully working Darius driver, co-authored with Jarek Burczynski.

- 4th December 2000: David Graves added support for a third Taito TC0100SCN chip emulation.

- 1st December 2000: David Graves updated the TC0100SCN Taito chip emulation to support extra wide tilemaps, making Darius 2, Ninja Warriors and Warrior Blade playable.

- 5th September 1998: J-ROM dumped Darius (Japan) (c)1987 TAITO.

LEVELS: 7

Other Emulators:

* FB Alpha

* Raine

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Romset: 1955 kb / 35 files / 654.3 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Darius (World)</description>

<manufacturer>Taito Corporation Japan</manufacturer>