The Darius series just might possibly be the forewarning message from the sea to the surface world about overfishing. This franchise's amazing giant aquatic-themed battleships may be closing in on the planet earth to teach us what for. Taito tried to spread their message, but it's too late. In the meantime, while we wait for impending doom at the fins of our metal fish overlords, indulging in the third entry in Taito's space shooter will help bide the hours.

Developed by the aforementioned Taito and released in arcades in 1994, Darius Gaiden was ported to the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, as well as windows. One of the unique traits of the Darius series was the arcade cabinets' use of multi screen projection that gave its stages a more broad view. One of the reasons Darius Twin, developed for the SNES felt inferior was its more muted gameplay and less than stellar visual flare.

With Darius Gaiden, the director decided to forego the multi monitor format and focus on developing this entry for a single screen, placing more emphasis on using the improving 3D rendering during the time period. Darius Gaiden takes full advantage of this and boasts one of the best looking shooters of the era, outclassing the Gradius series when it comes to visuals. Blending 2D art with some 3D rendered backgrounds and bosses, it's a look that I really do miss from the time period. Combined with a lot of the bullets and missiles flying all over the place, nearly every moment of Darius is action. I don't think it's a quite bullet hell, I wouldn't call a Darius game a bullet hell, but this was the closest it got to in the series. There's still some skill there that goes into avoiding enemy fire, and it is pattern based, but there's more than a few ways to thread the needle in Darius Gaiden.

A staple of the Darius series is its many paths to reach an end. This leads to some different alternative routes and stages, so providing you haven't played the game ad nauseum, you'll seldom play it the same way twice. Each stage is generally met by a fight with a giant metal sea creature (known as the Belser empire) as a boss fight.

I don't think I've ever found a legitimate explanation for the ocean-based theme of the enemy. Last week, I talked about R-Type's alien-based monsters, and it's fascinating in seeing each shooter series has its own mythos, some of the more run-of-the-mill retro SHMUPs like D-Force don't have an identity that help them stand out from the pack in the 16-bit era. At one point in D-Force, you're combating airships, then all of a sudden, it's dinosaurs!!

The attraction of Darius is its bosses, and these ships are big and fierce with some stubborn patterns and a few of them have very high health and some tricky weak points. With some patience, you can whittle them down while avoiding the merciless number of projectiles launched at you. Once you're done laughing at their ridiculous names, that is ("Fatty Glutton" is an actual name of a battleship. You figure that one out).

Gaiden is my favorite Darius game, and one of the SHMUPs I have talked the most about over the years and since I've been on social media platforms. It's a formidable challenge and has some high playability. Several boss fights aside, I don't think it's a monstrous beast of a shooter and can be toppled with mild practice. This SHMUP won't eat you alive like many others.