Darius Gaiden

Darius Gaiden (that's Guy-Den not Gay-Den)

Is possibly one of the best side-scrolling shooters I have ever played.
There are quite a few games in the Darius series, but today I will focus on Darius Gaiden.

To begin with, the graphics are fantastic! From the futuristic buildings, to the inside of Spaceships everything looks amazing. It has a wide range of really cool effects too, lasers shooting back and forth, the you seem to zoom through time and space in between levels and the way the bosses explode.

Speaking of the bosses, they are really interesting in the way that they are all based on a Sea creature of some sort, for instance the first boss Golden Ogre is an Ogre fish and Double Dealer is a flounder.

Mini-bosses (that can be claimed) and even some smaller ships are also marine creatures.

Another thing that is pretty interesting is the way you can choose your own path.

You'd start out at 'A' complete that, then you can choose from 'B' and 'C'

and it fans out until the last (and seventh) stages (V-Z)

This means that you can only play 7 out of 28 (one for each letter of alphabet with 2 V's and Z's) levels in one go, which I believe give the game alot of replay value, so it's a challenge in itself to play through each of the stages and beat all 7 final bosses (which take AGES)

Playing though 7 levels IIRC, will take about 20-30 mins so it's a great game.

A claimable mid-boss indicated by the blue sphere on it

Game play wise, it's a typical Side scrolling shoot 'em up but it has some other interesting features,

The Capture Sphere (which I mentioned earlier) is one of these features.

On your way through each level you will come across a slightly bigger ship than the others with a blue and orange sphere on it's back, you can either shoot this ship like all the others, or you can aim for the sphere.

If you do this, eventually, the sphere will come loose and float towards you, collect this and you'll have claimed the ship to use against others!

Different ships have different effects, the ship in the picture above with breathe fire and is incredibly useful.

Another cool feature is the way you can upgrade, you will come across several coloured emblems which will upgrade either your rockets, bullets, shield or give you an extra black hole (black holes suck up anything in the area and then explode causing additional damage)

The music in the game is astounding too, it's very atmospheric and really suits the locations you are at.

It reminds me of Sharon Apple's songs from the anime Macross Plus if you've seen it.

Darius Gaiden is a very fun and enjoyable game that is really easy to play again and again

and Thanks again Jamie for showing me a really cool game!

Qix

Ever heard of a game called Qix? (pronounced Kicks)
Not many have, admittedly I hadn't heard of it till about a year back
when I played it, I recognised it instantly though. Like Bubble Bobble, it's a gaming formula that has had many spinoffs and clones, because it's so addictive.
Basically you're a small character (usually a square) who draws straight lines across the screen to claim area, sounds easy right? But there's a line darting back and forth bouncing off the edges like your DVD logo when on standby, if it touches an incomplete line that's trailing behind you or if it touches you yourself, you die.

As you can probably imagine it gets hard. Especially when you've claimed most of the area and it's easier for 'Qix to get you since he/she/it doesn't have to travel so far anymore.

Throw in 2, 3, 4 little spaceship things that travel around the perimeter of the space you've claimed that ALSO kill you when they touch you, and you've got a hard but addictive game.

The game later had a few sequels Qix II - Tournament, Super Qix and Twin Qix.

My favourites of all the sequels was Volfied (also known as Ultimate Qix)

Volfied was a kickass sequel that made everything I loved about Qix even better,
it added, huge boss characters instead of Qix, and each boss owned little minions that you also had to trap
It was a much harder game but so satisfying when you finally beat that boss you been stuck on for ages.
It also feature block that you could capture and gain bonuses from, for instance you could stop time, or shoot lasers when you travel both of them are very useful

This will most likely happen to you alot

Wrapping things up, Qix and Volfied (or whatever version you are playing)
Is great for a quick play, it can get very frustrating but also very addictive
It may not be for everyone but in my eyes, Qix is very enjoyable

Bubble Bobble + Others

Now, I'm sure everyone reading this has either played or at least heard about Bubble Bobble, if not here's the basic story:

Two boys called Bub and Bob, turned into bubble blowing dinosaurs to save their girlfriends who had been kidnapped, they went through 100 stages, encasing enemies in the bubbles they blew and then popping them to kill the enemy inside.

Bubble Bobble was ported to many different platforms but the game play remained the same, on each level there was a certain number of enemies to kill, when killed they would turn into fruit which you could then collect for points, you could also collect a set of letter which spelled 'EXTEND' which would give you an additional life IIRC...

Player has '-X--N-' of EXTEND

Because Bubble Bobble was such a classic, there were plenty or remakes, clones, spinoffs and other games with the same idea behind it, a few successfuls ones are Rodland, Snow Brothers and Tumblepop

My personal favourite game similar to Bubble Bobble would have to be Don Doko Don,

like Bubble Bobble it's a 2 player game in which you go through 100 levels (50 normal 50 secret)

to rescue a princess, the only differences are, the Graphics and the way you dispatch the enemies

What you would do is, instead of blowing bubbles and popping them, you'd hit them with a hammer, walk up to them, pick them up and then throw them against the wall.

When they died, like in Bubble Bobble they'd turn into fruit which you'd collect for points, there were also various other powerups you could collect.

The music in the game is fantastic, chirpy, upbeat and, in general, real nice to listen to.

I have great memories of playing this game so

Thank you Jamie for introducing this to me :D

Overall, Bubble Bobble and all of the other spin offs it has had are still very playable today, showing just how solid the gameplay is.