Darius is a horizontal-scrolling shooter that Taito released in 1986, famous for its gallery of giant bosses shaped like mechanized sea creatures and for its original three-screen cabinet, which offered a panoramic field of view unheard of for its time. It also introduced branching routes, allowing different paths depending on the player's performance.
It became the starting point for one of the most beloved shooter sagas in Japanese arcades, with sequels that stretched across decades. Its boss design remains a mandatory reference for the genre, and the original still carries that fair-difficulty pulse that set a school of its own.
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