G Darius: SNES Feel on the PSX Company: THQ The graphics in G Darius are pretty interesting. Think back to the old Super Nintendo days, when Taito ruled the world of Bubble Bobble with an iron fist. Goofy enemies are attacking you from all sides. Brightly colored, swirling backgrounds enough to induce an epileptic fit in anyone. Explosions coming from every side. You get the picture. It has a very Japanimation feel to it. G Darius is a shooter-styled game, reminiscent of EDF (Earth Defense Force) for the Super Nintendo, only in a semi-3D world. You shoot straight in front of you, but the world turns from time to time. The bosses will rotate and allow you to move to the other side of the screen unharmed to shoot at a different angle. Basically, there are so many enemy aircraft attacking you at once that you hardly have time to look at anything else. Here?s a tip. Use a controller with a turbo feature on it so you can use all the weapons, and not have to keep punching the buttons repeatedly. One nice feature is that when you complete a level, you are then given a choice between the next two levels. G Darius does support dual shock, but I didn?t find that it added all that much to the gaming experience. The bosses include a "Tripod Sardine" and a mechanical carp, but with all the firepower you can imagine. When the giant carp was attacking me, he began shooting with every part of his body only at different times. At one point, he shot these missiles which looked like large lava lamps with fins. I think they were supposed to be Chinese fireworks, because they even sounded like fireworks when they exploded. Not incredibly hard, just fast and furious! The sheer number of enemies and projectiles attacking you can be overwhelming from moment to moment. G Darius is an intense shooter that won?t allow you to sit back and relax. But if shooters are your thing, you may enjoy it. G Darius plays like a Super Nintendo shooter, with eye candy backgrounds designed to distract you, but not affect the gameplay. To play the game well, the player must disassociate themselves from the backgrounds. Once you?ve done that, it?s just another shooter with challenging, weird bosses. While it appears all of the objects used in the game are actually 3-Dimensional objects, the players are limited to 2-Dimensional side scrolling motion and attacks, unlike the occasional change of perspective to be found in Einhander. -Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins