Oh boy, where do I even start?

I'm such a sucker for G-Darius since I first played it on my PS1 back in 2007-10. This game is so crazy. The music, the gameplay, EVERYTHING!

This port is just everything I just wanted. It's so good. Every little detail and effort was put onto this game.

If you are a hardcore fan of this game, just buy it.

No regrets!

Buy it so M2 gets off their asses and brings shot triggers to steam.

meditation.

G-Darius is, for me, the peak of Taito's surreal operatic STG direction and design (maybe alongside Metal Black). the experience has always evoked wonder and awe from me. G-Darius manages to capture the feeling that you are just another thing in a sea of millions of things that will happen with or without you, and yet, you are integral to the sea of all things. there is a certain intensity to its mood and spirit that i have not found in any other STG. playing through the HD version for the first time was one of the closest things to a religious experience you can get out of a game of its type. there is a setpiece in particular where you fly alongside a comet for an extended period of one of the zones as it weaves in and out of the scene and around you, like a cosmic dance luring you further into space. it has no bearing on the gameplay, but it is beautiful. seeing it like this was like experiencing it for the first time all over again.

OGR's G-Darius soundtrack is one of the greatest in the medium. his concept of the chimera shines through, blending the organic and inorganic to beautiful and anxious effect. the music is extremely well-represented here, which is worth noting as it is notoriously difficult to emulate the sound chip and its (for the time) advanced DSP. i'm not sure whether they've opted to stream recordings of it instead (it would certainly save on processing), but regardless of the method, it sounds excellent, as do the sound effects.

the slowdown seems about right. i do not have an original PCB and can only go by video, but best i can tell it is extremely serviceable accuracy. the newly added PSX version seems to be represented properly as well. it's great to have access to this version, as it has a boss rush mode that lets you play every boss in the game in a single sitting.

i do not have enough experience with Ver.2 to comment on it.

the new Exhibition mode is just so cool. there is a lack of slowdown, so it is very difficult, but this brings up a question - did they remake these from scratch in a new engine? the rendering looks different and it's super fast! but these are huge compliments. to me, this seems like a passion side-project that they were able to put together as a result of their new familiarity with the work. it's super cool. as always, i would love to see more of this kind of stuff specifically from M2. i understand the workload must be astronomical, but the love for the source material is tangible.

let's quickly address the other "M2" in the room, though: these guys are not known for putting together... friendly interfaces. it may have peaked here, with the total absence of on-screen keyboard representation, as your keyboard gets filtered through a funny gamepad layer instead. there is a button to show a "keyboard guide", but it seems to be mapped to a button that does not have a keyboard mapping. thankfully, the controls are fairly bog standard. arrow keys, Z, X, and A for autofire. it's whatever. it is at worst mildly frustrating and at best incredibly silly.

tl;dr G-Darius is a phenomenal piece of work and this is the best way to play it.

"To me, an idea in and of itself is unsatisfactory, an incomplete creation. I think you have to add spice before an idea can come to life. For days after my discovery that anything can become music, I searched for that spice. I found it on a TV science program. It was a phenomenon called "autoimmunity." In an experiment they took fertilized chicken eggs and inserted what would become the brains of quail. They were born as chicks that had the cries of quail. They were chimera. The chicks' immune systems began to attack the quail brains, and as a result they were unable to live for very long. In other words, the chicks' immune systems (self) took the quail brain cells as enemies (other). Self and other. The co-existence of contrary entities. While watching TV, I took a nearby piece of paper, and I wrote down these things in a memo. I had finally found my spice." - Hisayoshi Ogura, April 2011 interview for Square Enix Music Online

There's a lot of history behind the Darius series that I'm not entirely familiar with, but I'll say that the ones I've played have all been fantastic. G-Darius also happens to be fantastic. The early 3D effects and cinematic camera angles are still quite striking even though this particular game came out in '97. No, it's not going to compare to modern rendering techniques, but I still found them to be impressive for the time while still conveying the level of spectacle the devs intended some twenty five years ago. This collection by M2 features many versions of G-Darius, including revisions of the arcade release and the console release. If you're fan of the series there's a lot of history here, though as someone who's more familiar with Dariusburst CS I would have appreciated some supplemental material to learn more about the game and series.

Edit: nominated for "Best Game You Suck At" 2022!

G-Darius may be the most aesthetically perfect shooter ever produced.

The vibes are out of control:

The 1st stage has a full minute of silence before the soundtrack kicks in.

The boss that prevented me from getting my Lambda 1cc for several hours was a giant shrimp.

There's a shark that shifts between different dimensions while fighting you.

Your ship can mind control midbosses and then use their energy to charge up a kamehameha wave,

You get more points for having a Kamehameha battle with the big fish.

When Kimera II plays during the final stage I have to turn up the volume an additional 50% because that ♥♥♥♥ slaps.

When Sameluck and Lutia embrace at the end I cry every time.

You don't know how long I had been waiting for this. At long last, a PC port of G-Darius true to its arcade form has arrived, and takes great strides to make conventional emulation methods for it obsolete! Objectively speaking, this is easily one of the very best games of all time, right in the top three, and you need to get it now. Let me explain:

STGs have developed an unfair reputation as being these "generic space shooters", as if they're about nothing more than "shooting and avoiding stuff" like we hadn't moved past Space Invaders and Galaga. The truth is really the complete opposite of that assumption, and speaking as someone who's programmed an STG of my own, I can tell you that it's very difficult to make something that's unique, challenging, and compelling. The most well-designed STGs are highly distinct from each other in how they play out - Gradius, R-Type, and the like...

As the fourth arcade installment in the Darius series, G-Darius completely masters the art of STG. Like many others before it, it's a highly technical game that requires a ton of patience and skill to conquer; after all, its initial objective was to eat away at coins, and do it fast. While the sheer number of projectiles on the screen and the very limited number of hits your ship, the Silver Hawk, can take is bound to be overwhelming at first, you'll eventually notice yourself getting a lot better as you dedicate yourself to G-Darius more.

One distinguishing feature that's been around since the start of the Darius series is the branched structure of zones, or stages. When you complete a zone, you're given the option to select one of two succeeding zones. Both will have higher difficulty than the last, but the difficulty between each and every zone will vary, which gives players the opportunity to experiment further if they're not doing well on a particular route.

G-Darius takes that branched structure a step further. Even though it has fewer zones, it offsets this by splitting zones into two areas each, which can be selected at the midpoint of a zone. Depending on the area you select, you'll get a different variant of the zone's boss which could be harder as well.

Perhaps the most important feature of G-Darius is the ability to capture almost any enemy in the game and use it to gain additional firepower and take cover from overwhelming fire. Not only that, you can also convert them into energy to be used for an insanely powerful Alpha Beam, which can even be used to counter a boss's Beta Beam (large beam colored red). While you have to mind that all take only a finite number of hits, knowing what to capture and when exactly to turn them into beams will ultimately make G-Darius much easier to complete, eventually.

G-Darius HD brings forward several other external features to help novices improve. Not only does the built-in replay system allow players to look over exactly what went wrong without the need for a resource-intensive screen recorder, it also offers a training mode which lets players start from any zone with the exact set of powerups they want. As I understand, it even includes automatic savestates. Although I haven't been compelled to use that feature, it's great that it's available.

More than that, you also have the option to display a number of detailed statistics not visible in the original game, including the strength of your barrier, the hit points of the boss and whatever enemy you've captured, and your Alpha Beam charge gauge (useful if you need to hold it down very briefly to make your capture temporarily invulnerable, which is a technique used in some high-scoring runs). For those who want to win, these are immensely helpful.

I should point out upfront that the "HD" moniker is somewhat misleading. This is not a total retexturing of G-Darius; all that's really done here is some upscaling, and a few models were replaced with high-polygon versions. That's not to say it looks terrible; the visual style of G-Darius still holds up really well to this day, and I'm certain it has a lot to do with how the initial technical limitations really pushed the developers to get creative.

There's a lot of distinct, eye-popping scenes to fill the background in each zone, some including various details to make them feel much more alive, such as in this one zone where you're flying alongside pterosaurs on their way to feast on giant flowers, unknowing of the immediate fate of their planet. Such details weren't vital to the game, but the fact that they're there makes it that much more special. There's no lines of dialogue to tell the story; instead, the background is intently used to do so, and it's very well executed. You won this battle, but Amnelia is destroyed; now you drift through its debris in search of a new harbor for life...

Some of these graphics overwhelmed the original hardware at times, making the game slow down at times, and, in turn, making it considerably easier. There have been a few ports of G-Darius in the past; one on the PlayStation 2 found in Taito Legends 2 happened to run at around 60 FPS almost all the time, which could throw off some players more accustomed to previous versions. M2 solved this issue, and now I have the perfect version to start up without much trouble!

The soundtrack for G-Darius was composed by Hisayoshi Ogura, who also composed for previous installments. I have to tell you, not only is this his strongest work, it's the absolute best game soundtrack of all time. As with previous Darius games, it's not always some sort of adrenaline-pumping, free-flying magic as is expected from STGs, and that's what makes it so special. The highly unusual instrumentals and techniques it leverages create an experience so powerful, completely unlike anything I've ever heard elsewhere. It's the kind of music that can really grow on you the more you listen to it.

I also really like how G-Darius isn't afraid to start the first zone off with silence, only letting the background music kick in around a minute later. Such a simple cue shifted further away really goes far in emphasizing its importance, and makes the track hit that much stronger.

Even for all the time I hadn't been playing G-Darius, I've listened to its soundtrack for countless hours on end as I worked on some of my many various projects. It's such a pleasure to listen to; this is the exact kind of music I'd want more of. If you watch an interview Ogura partook in for Beep in 2019, you'll really understand how much goes into this.

Though $30 USD is an extreme price for a game originating from 1997 and I would advise you only buy it when it's discounted, G-Darius HD does go the extra mile to help justify itself. The extra features mentioned earlier are enough to obsolete emulation (Nintendo, take notes!!), but there's more to it. The package comes with several variants of the game, including the original, non-HD version with less polygons, as well the lesser known "Ver. 2" release of G-Darius for arcades that changed a number of gameplay aspects. The PC version even includes a special "exhibition mode" that answers the question "what if G-Darius came in a multi-screen cabinet?" It's extremely limited; you can only fight a few bosses in it, but it's cool that it's there. If this mode could be updated to cover the entire game, that would really be something.

I would like to see a few quality of life improvements in this game, including removing the required delay in between adding a credit and starting the game. The ability to skip the intro cutscene is already there, so that's a start.

Overall, G-Darius HD is a fantastic experience well worth your time. In many ways, G-Darius is a swan song to the old school STG, before the bullet hell subgenre took over. G-Darius is not just a game, it's an instrument for inspiring generations of new elite fighters no matter what they are.

shoot these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fish

Very arcade perfect ports of both G Darius and VER.2, The HD versions look great as well, hats off to M2, one of the best porting teams out there. This is my favorite Taito game and I'm a major fan of this game since I was little in the mid 2000's when I first saw it. I'm SO pleased that Taito took the time to perfectly re release this game on modern hardware to properly introduce it to new gamers around. The amount of options are great as well and the reduce slow down option is nifty and a welcomed feature. The widescreen mode is a great concept as well and hopefully more bosses get added someday. Plus adding the PS1 port to the package is great as well. Again many thanks to Taito and M2 for helping this game live on with us. Much love! \^0^/

I's G-Darius ported by M2, when M2 makes a port of a classic like this, you buy it, no brainer.

G-Darius is a polarizing game. On one hand it has hypnotic levels that are varied and colourful. It has strange aquatic enemies that come in many shapes and sizes. Its like if Junji Ito's Gyo was turned into a shmup. And it works.
But I also find the sparse music design a little strange. The slow progression in the player's firepower department rather antiquated. The difficulty or rather the time it takes to fight some bosses tedious. Its not that they morph into something wondrous or amazing for their next phase of attack. Its just a case of you take town 3 turrets and they turn their back onto you with three more turrets to destroy. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Even with all its archaic designs and shortcoming G-Darius never feels truly boring. The enemy capture system is always fun to use. The strange worlds that make up the levels are something to behold. Even in all their pixelated glory they exude so much quality and immerse the players in these strange and hostile worlds.
I love the chunky metallic characters. I must admit, the game although old looks much more appealing to me aesthetically than Darius Burst Chronicles which has this plain vanilla look compared to G-Darius. As if it was created on a strict budget and lacks vibrancy.

I sincerely hope that the next Darius game they make changes to the weapon upgrade system and it doesn't take forever to powerup. They add more weapon variety and multiple ships with different types of firepower that add more depth to the shmupping experience. More new bosses. I am completely sick of beating the same bosses over and over in Darius Burst Chronicles.

I want to thank both Taito and M2 for their hard work to revive this excellent game that was once unleashed upon the owners of the original Playstation and have done an excellent job cleaning it up and giving it a little upgrade in the visual department along with the gadgets. And also the different version which mix up the enemy patterns and difficulty. I originally thought this release came with a widescreen version of the game but upon booting it up realized that was only a boss rush mode. Even though I am tittle disappointed I am completely happy to own this release of G-Darius in my library and will keep on playing it whenever I am in mood for blasting some evil alien fish. :D