Both born in 1974, these two second generation gamers, now in their 40s, are here to talk about Darius. One created a paradise for retro gamers that features two authentic Taito sit-down cabinets in a row, each equipped with their original 19-inch monitors. The other has several stories about Darius from his teens, twenties, and thirties…almost as though he was drawn to it by a mysterious force. We had a conversation with these two friends about Darius, and ‘80s video games in general. There are some things that could be misunderstood if taken literally, but this is largely a casual talk between two middle-aged friends, about video games. People will agree with some things and disagree with others. But either way, you’ll find plenty of charm in their boundless conversation.
First Contact
(Ikeda) Were there Darius cabinets in Hokkaido?
(Otsuka) There were. And pretty early on, I think.
(Ikeda) So there were Taito arcades there?
(Otsuka) There was one in Chitose at the time. My dad was a Japanese Self-Defense Force official, so we moved around a lot. At that time, the government was more concerned about Russia than North Korea, so they were really building up the military bases in Hokkaido. Cities with military bases prosper no matter where they are, and Chitose was also home to the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force. And that made it the second biggest city in Hokkaido, just beneath Sapporo.
(Ikeda) Since this was quite a good era for arcades, were there a bunch of them in Hokkaido?
(Otsuka) There were. In Hokkaido, there was a famous arcade called NTK that was in the score rankings. But when I transferred to Chitose Junior High School, there was a local Taito We’ll Talk arcade that I started going to. And then one day, a Darius cabinet suddenly appeared. And it really was sudden! It was very impressive because of how big it was, and that was my first encounter with the game. I knew absolutely nothing about it beforehand, so I really did just suddenly see it one day.
(Interviewer) Ikeda, did you say that you first saw Darius when it went on location test?
(Ikeda) Yes. But I think they showed it ahead of time in Gamest, or something. It made me wonder just when the game was coming out. I saw Darius on location test during the last spring break of my 6th grade year. Now that I think about it, it would have been already appearing in arcades. Maybe we got an early shipment of the Old Version.
(Otsuka) When did you first see it, Ikeda?
(Ikeda) I think it was March 1987.
(Otsuka) What year student were you?
(Ikeda) It would have been just after my 6th grade graduation ceremony.
(Otsuka) In ’87, I feel like I would have been in my first year of middle school.
(Interviewer) Are you two the same age? Were you both born in 1974?
(Otsuka) I was one grade higher. I feel like I was in my first or second year of middle school when I first saw Darius…it may have been my first.
(Ikeda) For me, it was spring break of my 6th grade year. Then I went to middle school, and it came out in April. There was a Taito arcade in Asakusa Rokku that I started going to once I started middle school. Darius was shown at a trade show in February, right?
(Interviewer) It was shown at the November AM Show of the previous year, and then the February AOU of the following year. And it’s said to have appeared on the market around then.
(Otsuka) I’m imagining that not only was a single cabinet quite expensive to produce, but also very time consuming. It’s a wood cabinet, and assembling it is fairly complex. So, I think manufacturing and shipping 100 of them at once would be quite challenging. I’ve seen photos of the Darius production factory somewhere before. For example, even if there’s an order for 5000 units, isn’t it unrealistic to manufacture and ship all of them simultaneously?
(Ikeda) I think they’d be delivered in groups.
(Otsuka) So then the timing with which they arrive at arcades was probably quite varied.
(Ikeda) I think Taito arcades got them first. I saw it at a Game Fantasia arcade. They didn’t have any cabinets in my neighborhood. It didn’t seem to have made it out to the working class neighborhoods. Namco and…well my hometown didn’t have a Taito arcade, so it must have been a Namco. Anyway, the Namco arcade got one in April. I definitely remember that.
(Otsuka) If you stop and think about it, it takes too much time for them all to be shipped at the same time. It’s not all data sent over a network like things are now, so release dates weren’t as clear as with something like the distribution of plastic model kits. So that’s why I think the dates were all slightly off, since they’d get shipped to different arcades at different times. I sometimes wonder about things like score aggregation, but there are regional differences in that regard.
(Ikeda) Did the first ones have the 11-inch monitors? That’s all they had. I hadn’t seen the smaller version until it appeared at Try Amusement Tower, around ’95. It made me wonder what the heck was going on, if I’d gotten bigger or something!
The 15-inch version was released when the New Version came out.
(Ikeda) Ahh, that’s right.
(Otsuka) I also didn’t see the smaller version until some time later.
(Ikeda) They didn’t have any of those in Tokyo at all. The first time I saw one was at Try Amusement Tower. I feel like big cities had the larger version of the cabinet.
Accompanying for Recording
About how much did a single play cost back then?
(Ikeda) (Immediately replies) 200 yen.
(Otsuka) 200 yen.
(Ikeda) It started out at 200 yen, but I feel like it had gone down to 100 yen just before summer vacation began.
(Otsuka) What stands out to me is that the middle school I attended at the time had a unique system of color-coded jerseys for each grade. Moreover, wearing the school uniform was considered uncool, adding to the mysterious culture of it all. But there was also a unique part of that culture where you had to wear a jersey, or else you were out. And since my class year’s jersey was blue, I could easily recognize other kids in my same year when I went to the arcade or whatever. And since there were 7 or 8 classes, there were plenty of kids I didn’t know. But since I was able to identify the ones in the same year as I was, I became good friends with a lot of them and really went to the arcade a lot. And one day, one of my friends suddenly said that they wanted to record the music in Darius. And there was this young guy who worked at that arcade that we asked for help. He let us into the arcade an hour before they opened, and we recorded it using a radio cassette player hooked into the headphone jack. That friend asked me if I wanted to come with them on a Sunday morning, and we went and recorded the music at 9 AM. And that’s my first memory of interacting with Darius as a hardcore player. He was recording, so I couldn’t just die halfway through, right? I had a lot of additional pressure from him being there. It’s what we’d now call a live demonstration. He was so into recording, and he’d stop and rewind the tape every time I died. Stuff like that.
(Ikeda) When did the Flexi Disc come out?
(Interviewer) You mean the one that came with the special issue of Beep?
(Ikeda) Did that come out before the console ports of Darius?
(Interviewer) I think so…
(Ikeda) That was my first memory of just listening to the background music.
(Otsuka) Because that game’s music had so much clout and they loved game music in general, so it’s no wonder they wanted to record it. They probably wanted to listen to it at home. I feel like the soundtrack was actually released during the summer of ’87. It definitely came out.
Memories of Play
(Interviewer) Do you remember anything about playing the Extra Version?
(Ikeda) I remember it being in the summer. Or maybe it was later in the summer, like just after August? It kind of feels like it might have been September.
(Otsuka) There are pros and cons to the Extra Version.
(Ikeda) The Extra versions of games that Taito puts out tend to be pretty uninteresting.
(Everyone Laughs)
(Ikeda) It was boring when they did it for Rainbow Island too.
(Interviewer) Did you play the Extra Version enough to clear it?
(Ikeda) I did, but it was just a basic clear. My friend T was really good at it, so I was always watching him play. I think I did a basic clear without using the laser. It’s fairly simple to do using just the regular missiles, though it’s all over if you die.
(Otsuka) My friends were always on it every time I was at the Taito arcade with them, so I mostly watched it too. I was just standing behind them, staring at the screen. I spent so long looking at it, that it’s become one of the most memorable titles for me. There’s this strange sense of distance that I have with this game though, and there aren’t many others like it. It’s been bothering me for awhile.
Living with Darius
(Otsuka) After that, it suddenly turns into a personal story for me. I had moved to Tokyo and a friend told me that he had a house in Nakano that I could stay at. And when I went there, there was a Darius cabinet smack in the middle of that house. And it was at that moment that Darius became a part of me. I’ve often wondered why I can’t seem to get away from Darius cabinets, but it’s been very vivid memory for me.
(Interviewer) After the original Darius ran its course, the cabinets were used for The Ninja Warriors, then Darius II, and then they were removed from arcades. Then they were brought back at Try Amusement Tower in the later half of the ‘90s, where they’re still running now. It’s truly a strange title, with a history of decline, blank periods, and revival.
(Otsuka) Managing a Darius cabinet is very challenging, including the process of moving it. The Darius cabinet that’s at Mikado actually came all the way from Sendai. Carrying it up the stairs from the basement in the arcade there called F1, is really quite a struggle.
(Ikeda) We gave up on it there, for a second.
(Otsuka) Don’t I know it. The Darius cabinet that was in my friend’s house that I was living in belonged to a games writer named Youichi Shibuya, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. It was a cabinet that had all of the monitors removed from it. I called him at that time and asked him what he wanted me to do with the cabinet, since it was quite inconvenient to have it there. He said “Please just throw it away” But even if I did try to throw it away, I couldn’t get it out through the entranceway. When I thought about how he’d gotten it in there in the first place, it seemed as though they’d brought it in through the veranda. Since there was no other way around it, I brought it back out through the veranda on my own, rotating it around in different directions, and threw it away in Nakano Ward’s bulk garbage. Thinking about it now, it was quite generous of them to let me do that! (Laughs) I don’t think they’d take something like that nowadays!
(Ikeda) You’d have to get a saw and break it down into pieces.
(Otsuka) At the time, I realized that the cabinet was made of wood, assembled entirely with a wooden frame. I thought my only option was to cut through it, but I couldn’t get a regular saw to go through it.
(Ikeda) Yeah, that wouldn’t work! (Laughs)
(Otsuka) You’d have to use a chainsaw with something that hard, or it just wouldn’t work.
(Ikeda) The one at Try is the smaller 15-inch version. But if you take a look at it, it couldn’t get through either. It was cut into pieces and reassembled like a plastic model.
(Otsuka) Hardware of that era wasn’t like today’s Astro City cabinets with a steel frame and lightweight materials like FRP. Older large cabinets were like pinball machines, they were just one solid unit. I remember facing quite a struggle at an arcade back then, when they said Darius was coming in. Considering the logistics back then, we didn’t know if it was coming in during the morning or night. First, the main body had to be brought in, then the three monitors. Then we assembled it, and had to adjust everything with the half-mirrors. It was a pretty tedious process.
(Ikeda) It really is tedious.
A Somewhat Troublesome Partner
(Otsuka) And that’s what I learned from living with such a troublesome arcade cabinet.
(Ikeda) You were living with it? (Laughs)
(Otsuka) I wouldn’t exactly say it was crazy or anything, but it was definitely a troublesome sort of partner.
(Ikeda) Darius was probably only in arcades until around the summer of ’88. That’s about a year and a half.
(Otsuka) Those cabinets were all converted into The Ninja Warriors before we knew it.
(Ikeda) They all were converted into The Ninja Warriors, and I was just like “This sucks!”
(Both laugh)
(Otsuka) You said it, but there was a sense of anticipation. Darius’ three screen setup really shocked us. So when they changed out the board to the next game and we thought “Alright, we’re moving on up!”…well the music was good, but I didn’t think the game was very interesting! (Laughs)
(Ikeda) I felt like I was better off playing Kung-Fu Master. It felt just like a normal game.
(Otsuka) It was like, did this game really need three screens?
(Ikeda) It would have been fine if it was fun, but it wasn’t! (Laughs)
(Interviewer) If I were asked if Darius really needed three screens, I feel like I could still argue that it did.
(Otsuka) The game’s enjoyment lies in the large expression of the enemies, and the ability to control both the number of bullets and those on the screen, across all three screens. The Ninja Warriors didn’t really have any of that.
(Ikeda) It didn’t. It only really used the middle screen.
(Otsuka) The amount of disappointment I felt was kind of amazing. And that’s why I still say now: The best thing about it was the music.
Darius’ Period of Winter
(Interviewer) Entering the ‘90s, were there many places that still had those 3 monitor cabinets?
(Ikeda) There were hardly any in Tokyo. There were barely any at places along the Yamanote Line, but there was this one time when I really wondered what Hi Tech Nobel was thinking: Around ’91 they had Darius and Ninja Warriors cabinets right next to each other! It made quite the impact, but I thought they’d gone crazy. I remember that very clearly.
(Otsuka) In that sense, I think things reached their peak when Gamest wrote about it in “The Best Games.” After that, everything became open source, leading to a kind of decline, for better or worse.
(Interviewer) You could say it was forgotten about, but you could also say it was inevitable, given the time period.
(Otsuka) That’s about right.
(Ikeda) There was an arcade in this yellow building in Korakuen…there’s a convenience store there now…but there was always a Darius cabinet there. It was an arcade in Korakuen Amusement Park, I saw it everyday in high school. Even though we were into the ‘90s, you’d still be able to play Darius if you went there. I feel like it was the Extra Version, though I’m not completely sure.
(Otsuka) I think you confirmed how long it was actively in arcades amidst the various interviews you’ve been doing, and it wasn’t all that long, right?
(Interviewer) Yes. In general, it was removed from arcades within a few weeks since it didn’t make that much money. At best, it stuck around in some places for three months. But then a year later, it was converted into The Ninja Warriors.
(Otsuka) Researching online and talking to other people for research while I was writing The End of Arcadia is what made me realize that it wasn’t around for very long. I wasn’t able to get my hands on hardly any materials from that time. There were some rumors and such that got printed, but I learned that it wasn’t around for nearly as long as I’d imagined.
(Ikeda) It was such a short time, gone before you even knew it.
A Time When We Only Looked Ahead
(Interviewer) I recently asked the head of the Amano Game Museum about this. He had four cabinets at the peak, but the sticks kept breaking and the maintenance became difficult and time consuming. He said it was fine as long as they were bringing in money, but when they stopped making money and were just sitting there, he let them go.
(Otsuka) Considering the earnings of a cabinet, the size is a problem. Once you can clear Darius normally, the hourly earnings become pretty low. And even though you can up that by having two players playing at the same time, it’s not really necessary to play that game with two players. Everyone just does it single player. It started out as 200 yen per play, but when it dropped to 100 or 50 yen, it stopped being a cabinet that was bringing in money.
(Ikeda) That’s all true. The ‘90s was an era when people were all looking for something new. Street Fighter II and Virtua Fighter came out, then stuff like Daytona USA. It seems like having those types of cabinets is horrible, especially if you’re working in an arcade.
(Otsuka) So what are the actual production numbers…
(Ikeda) I feel like back then they sold 2 or 3,000 cabinets at minimum. It definitely didn’t sell 10,000.
(Otsuka) And it’s quite a bit of work just to make one cabinet.
(Ikeda) I can imagine it being challenging. In the ’90s, when you visited used game stores, there was a place called Mama Top in Shizuoka that had a ridiculous amount of used cabinets. They were cheap, and they would practically let you take them away, saying, “Feel free to take them, they’re just in the way” (Laughs)
(Otsuka) And unlike regular cabinets, you can only put The Ninja Warriors in. There’s really no other choice.
(Ikeda) And then I think there was QT in Shin Sekai in Osaka. They’ve since closed, but they always had a Darius cabinet there. They swapped out the boards every week: Darius, The Ninja Warriors, and the three screen Darius II. It was something like that, probably.
(Otsuka) Thinking about it now, they should have been evenly distributed nationwide, but it seems they were concentrated in certain areas and not operational. It seems skewed in some way.
(Ikeda) The issue of transporting them could have also contributed to not being able to purchase them.
(Otsuka) That’s true.
(Ikeda) They were expensive, so much so that not just any old guy who owned an arcade could get them. You might have wanted one, but couldn’t get one.
Gamest Awards and Tatsujin Ou Ojisan
(Interviewer) During interviews, there were people who mentioned that the first game wasn’t in any arcades around them.
(Otsuka) I’m sure there were. There was a pretty well known arcade in Hokkaido called NTK, that was printed in the Gamest high score listings and everything. They never even got a cabinet at all, so if not for that We’ll Talk Taito arcade, I wouldn’t have played Darius.
(Ikeda) It makes sense that they had one, since it was a Taito arcade.
(Otsuka) They did.
(Otsuka) Speaking of arcades in Sapporo, the biggest one was a Sugai arcade. Though there was a Carrot too.
(Ikeda) They operated arcades over a pretty wide area.
(Otsuka) Sugai ran a lot of big arcades, but I’m not sure if they had Darius. While Darius as a title is highly recognized, the reality behind just how many people encountered it in real-time and how many arcades actually had it, might be a bit more questionable than the reality that people imagine.
(Ikeda) We were kids and getting our information directly from the pages of Gamest, so there was this feeling of Darius being so amazing! But really that’s no different than Mikado promoting Tatsujin Ou (Truxton)! (Laughs)
(Otsuka) It really isn’t any different! (Laughs) It’s like when the anime magazine OUT did the first feature on Yamato. Even though no one was watching it, it was like “Yamato is really this hot right now?!”
(Ikeda) It’s after the fact now, so who knows.
(Otsuka) That’s a correct approach from a media perspective, isn’t it? In that same way, it’s like everyone acknowledging a game, or considering it a global revolution, if it takes the number one spot in a Gamest annual popularity poll.
(Ikeda) I sure thought so.
(Otsuka) Because they instill the idea in you.
(Ikeda) From the time when Valkyrie no Densetsu won that award, I was kind of like…huh?
(Everyone Laughs)
It was like of like “What? A character action game won?”
(Ikeda) So anything is fine, if it has a female main character in it? (Laughs)
(Otsuka) There’s that, but there’s a reason that not a lot of arcades had that game on the floor back then.
The Legend of the Three Screen Cabinet
(Ikeda) I heard something from someone I know who used to work as a manager at a Taito arcade, and by coincidence, he was the same person who told me about the location for Mikado back when it was in Shinjuku. The location that the Shinjuku Mikado was in had previously been a Taito arcade, and apparently it was a pretty revolutionary arcade that had a DJ booth and everything. But when they were turning on a corner with a Darius cabinet on the stairs, they smacked into the wall and it put a huge dent in the mortar. Then that piece of mortar fell and crashed into a parked car below. It was in Kabukicho, so there were a lot of scary people there. He told me about how awful it was.
(Otsuka) I mean, it’s because those cabinets are so huge and heavy. I’ve actually experienced that myself.
(Ikeda) The other thing is, I guess that if you keep a Darius cabinet around after years of operation, things start getting a bit risky with the electrical components. There are stories of them just disappearing from arcades for that reason.
(Otsuka) And even though they do stress tests on them, that’s only a number of months of testing, right? No one has any idea what’s going to happen to them after 10 years, or 30 years. The cabinet that was in that house, I was able to move on my own because it didn’t have the monitors or board in it. But if it had those things, there’s no way I would have been able to do it. I wouldn’t have gotten crushed and died.
(Ikeda) I think they might weigh something like 300 kg? All the maintenance we had to do on the one we have running at Mikado was really tough. By the way, the two monitor Darius II cabinet is a real upgrade in that sense. It’s easier to move and to maintain.
(Otsuka) I think they must have done quite a bit of reflection on that cabinet.
(Ikeda) The glass and such is really just set in there with the Darius I cabinet. The one for Darius II has it bolted on, so it absolutely can’t slide off.
The Reason Mikado has a Cabinet
(Interviewer) Why is it that you have Darius setup at Mikado?
(Ikeda) When I opened Mikado, I remember the impact that seeing those two Darius cabinets at Hi Tech Nobel had, and also seeing Darius and The Ninja Warriors cabinet setup right next to each other when Hey opened as well. I decided that level of impact was necessary for Mikado too, so I wanted to try it. I just happened to know the owner of an arcade called F1 at the time, and I talked to him about it and it with his help.
(Otsuka) Not the current F1R, the F1 that was around before that. The original closed, and then it was brought back again.
(Interviewer) You have two of those cabinets, so did you get the second one after that?
(Ikeda) The other one was a Ninja Warriors cabinet that I think may have been a little too much for the private owner that had it? They had it, but they said they had to throw it away because of a move. The board could be sold for some money, but the rest of the contents couldn’t be. So then there was a discussion about just taking the cabinet for free! (Laughs) The second one was free!
(Otsuka) From the perspective of an arcade operator, it takes up a lot of space, and it’s a cabinet that can basically be used for a single purpose. So it’s certainly an annoying cabinet to have around.
(Ikeda) That’s true.
(Interviewer) The discussion of the high cost of the cabinet comes into play here, and I think it’s because it was in operation for such a long period of time. Do you think it was unusual for the same game to be operation for a year during that period?
(Ikeda) I think so.
(Otsuka) Back then there would have been a desire to rotate the game out. However, even though they’re left in place, the time that the machines were operating for, or the time that they were operating as games, shouldn’t necessarily be that long.
(Ikeda) The period of time in which they were setup in Mikado until now is much longer.
(Otsuka) Given that they were making the Extra Version at the time, it wasn’t so much of an upgrade as it was a replacement. If the game is bringing in good revenue, there’s no reason to make an upgrade. So it’s easy to imagine that Taito was experimenting all sorts of different things.
The Big Three Horizontal Shooters
(Ikeda) But whenever someone asks “Is it really as good of a game as R-Type, Gradius, or Salamander?”, Darius kind of falls down a bit. Even it can’t be beaten in terms of audio and visual quality.
(Otsuka) It’s outstanding in terms of audio and visual quality.
(Ikeda) If they were a visual-kei band, Gradius and R-Type would be playing really technical things.
(Otsuka) If I were to compare Darius to a band, I’d say it’s one that does interesting things and has a lot of visual appeal, but isn’t really geared toward live performances.
(Ikeda) Like Led Zeppelin.
(Otsuka) Yeah, yeah.
(Ikeda) Then Gradius is Deep Purple. You just look at it and go, “It’s so good!” (Laughs)
(Interviewer) People often say that Darius didn’t do anything to innovate as a game, and that it was just a reconstruction of Scramble for that era.
(Otsuka) Saying something like that tracks, because the game systems weren’t really all that complex. But it really stands out in terms of graphics and music. Because once you hear the music, you’ll never forget it. And there’s nothing quite like the look of the aquatic world it takes place in, it hooked me as soon as I saw it. I think the aquatic sci-fi look that Darius has is more original than the slimy H.R. Giger-inspired look of R-Type.
(Ikeda) R-Type and Salamander are more niche, in that way. They’re both amazing, but the gross look makes it much more niche. But if you think about it in terms of replication into pixel art, Darius is pretty cool looking. In a standard kind of way. That world has kind of a niche feeling to it! (Laughs)
(Interviewer) R-Type and Salamander were of that era where they were taking influence from Giger.
(Otsuka) That’s true, the influence of Alien and such was very powerful.
(Ikeda) It was an era where all sorts of horror movies were being made, after all. So it’s not completely understandable.
(Ikeda) This is all an afterthought, but the Darius series, apart from Gaiden, there’s a pretty low limit to the number of bullets you can shoot on screen. Considering that Darius 1 has three screens, you have to shoot carefully or else you’ll run out of bullets on screen. It was like shooting in Space Invaders. Gradius and R-Type differentiate themselves by doing that correctly, but that’s an afterthought. Ultimately, with Darius Gaiden existing now, it just makes you wonder why they didn’t have shooting work like that back then! (Laughs)
Driving Force for Being a Novelist
(Otsuka) This is a title that you could say I have an emotional attachment to, or that I’m linked to by fate. By coincidence I ended up recording the music to this game on a cassette recorder, and by coincidence I ended up living in a house that had a cabinet in it. As an author, those things alone makes me think something is going on, since normally those coincidences don’t happen. That led me to researching a bunch of things and writing my novel, The End of Arcadia. But the final reason for doing that was I’d heard that the high score from 1987 had been surpassed. After looking into it, I found that the video of that high score had been uploaded to YouTube. Then, as I started writing, that YouTube video just disappeared, poof. After that, I went through various connections and asked around, and it turns out that it was basically a rapid-fire switch. It’s the difference between the strategies used by skilled players at the time and those developed later with rapid fire devices and switches. Those changed the pattern for getting through the game and led to higher scores, so suddenly it all made sense. I heard about this after I finished writing the novel and thought that it illustrated a changing of the times, a story common between all score-based games.
(Ikeda) Because synchro rapid fire devices only came about with Darius II.
(Otsuka) And I’m saying that scores got higher because of that. And also, Mikado is very interesting in that the high score changed once again because a player there. And when I heard that, I thought that there must be a few mysteries still left on that board. There’s someone who’s always playing it at Mikado, after all.
(Ikeda) S-kun is still playing that game.
(Otsuka) Really? How many years has he been playing it?
(Ikeda) He started playing it at Mikado in 2008, so 11 years! (Laughs)
(Otsuka) Lucky, have you heard about S-kun?
(Interviewer) Yeah. This was a private conversation, but he told me a lot about this. He didn’t work out the scoring through analysis, but rather he researched thorough actually logically playing through the patterns. He’s a super player that put all of that together and actually did it through play.
(Otsuka) What was it…didn’t he say that the score stops going up eventually, if you keep using rapid fire?
(Ikeda) The game glitches or something.
(Interviewer) And then the conversation about rank also came up, about how the speed of the bullets that the bosses shoot is different. Then we talked about how maybe some of the content of Gichi’s novel was based on him.
(Otsuka) There is quite a bit of that. I pulled things from a lot of different stories. The story ends without showing any specific strategies, but there are still quite a few mysteries, so to speak.
Real Portrayal
(Interviewer) Your novel is heavily based on games, isn’t it?
(Otsuka) It is.
(Interviewer) It would be rude to say that it’s pointless, but the cabinets, strategies, and reality found in the story are amazing. I can’t help but wonder where you got the ideas from.
(Otsuka) There are largely two places. One is those old strategies, the ones that were printed in Gamest. And there are people beating that high score. The story of that was what got me to start writing. First, I heard that the high score had been updated from someone, and I wondered what strategy pattern they were using. I was always researching what patterns there might be that surpassed the Gamest ones, but I didn’t know much. I started writing, and when I finished there was a lot of feedback from various places saying that it was done with synchro rapid fire. I heard that kids in Saitama were putting up scores using synchro rapid fire. Then, under Mikado, they kept playing, and there’s still stuff like new bugs and ranks emerging from this game.
(Ikeda) Was the bonus you get from the silver ball item anywhere between 50 to 51200? The value is random, but there was a rumor that there was one that one that was worth a fixed 51200 points.
(Interviewer) That amount has a pretty big impact on score.
(Ikeda) Right? I mean, it’s over 50,000 points! But S-san won’t tell me everything there is to know about Darius, so I’m not sure. As you’d expect, there’s a lot of information.
Unreproducible on Digital Recordings
(Interviewer) This is a port, but there’s been talk about how the sound of the wave beam on the PS4 version is wrong.
(Ikeda) You can’t reproduce that, because the circuits on the board are analog. Soundtracks are often digital recordings, but you can’t do that with Darius. FM synthesis is great and all, but Darius has something equivalent an analog Boss effects box on the board. It’s like the FM sound is output through that effects box. So depending on the situation, you have to adjust the analogue effects box’s output.
(Otsuka) Another thing that’s a pain in the butt.
(Ikeda) That’s why it’s going to sound different if you’re recording it digitally, because it’s not passing through all that. And that’s why it’s absolutely unreproducible. People should just stop trying to do digital recordings of it.
(Otsuka) With that in mind, the recording that my friend did through the headphone jack was the real thing!
(Ikeda) If I tried to imitate Jimi Hendrix’s guitar sound, just using the same effects pedals as he did alone wouldn’t make me sound the same. So because this game’s sound was something that was fine tuned by people, I feel it’s better to just give up on reproducing it digitally.
(Interviewer) In that case, it seems like the authentic way to capture the sound would be to bring a real cabinet into a studio and setup a mic to record it.
(Ikeda) Absolutely! You can kind of record the FM part. Because it’s coming off of a ROM, it would come out all disjointed. But you could record it.
(Otsuka) No matter how you look at it, it’s a troublesome machine to operate and maintain.
(Ikeda) Older games from the ‘70s had components called melody integrated circuits (ICs), which were specifically for the purpose of producing sound. Back then there were no dedicated sound chips, and people weren’t necessarily equipped to deal with sound programming. So the sound on these melody ICs alone would provide the sound effects. They’d take these sound effects and treat them like instruments, then sync them up with the game. Darius was the ultimate form of this…the evolution of it.
(Otsuka) Whether it’s versatility or recording the sound, the ideas that they’ve implemented nowadays for easier operation just weren’t around back then.
(Ikeda) As a game, it wasn’t very revolutionary. But in terms of hardware, it was pretty amazing. Absolutely crazy.
(Otsuka) I’m amazed the plan went through when it involved that half mirror.
(Ikeda) I ended up talking to you about this a bit awhile back, but older games had marquees around the screens. And they’d use a half mirror to reproduce the effect of a diorama. But making that diorama was hard, so here it kind of feels like someone just told them to make a diorama out of pixels. It’s like they were trying to reproduce an aquarium.
(Otsuka) I think it’s a reproduction of a technique to create distance or a feeling of being three dimensional, like looking through a periscope in a submarine. And I think it’s a technique that they were able to employ because they were making this cabinet.
(Ikeda) As a hardware company, Taito is pretty amazing. Even though they’re also amazing in terms of software and music as well.
The Illusive Shinjuku Version
(Ikeda) They definitely put a version of the game on location test that used the strange bosses that appeared in the PC Engine version that were scrapped, and there were some people in the ‘90s that had the board…but I wonder if any of them are still around. None of them have surfaced.
(Interviewer) I guess it’s known for sure that a per-production version was running at a We’ll Talk arcade in Shinjuku. But there isn’t much information on it, so it’s still a mystery.
(Ikeda) That’s right, there were actual screenshots printed in magazines and such. That’s why there was no doubt about it when the PC Engine was released and Super Darius came out. It was like, “Ahh, it’s that hermit crab thing from before!” Though the way it attacks was probably completely different. The PC Engine version probably only came out because they already had that data. I heard this from a person who had a board. I was like, “Oh that’s awesome, it sure would be nice to play that some day!” But that got completely lost in the conversation.
(Otsuka) I wonder how many of those were running?
(Interviewer) According to the information that I gathered, there was also one running at the Kabukicho We’ll Talk, apart from the location test. I think enthusiasts refer to it as the Shinjuku Version.
(Otsuka) It would still be really interesting if that was dug up again.
(Ikeda) Well now that you bring it up, someone might actually do it! (Laughs)
(Otsuka) There are plenty of secret stories like this in the world of arcade games, but there are more of them than people think about Darius. I get the impression that there are a lot of things that are still unclear.
(Interviewer) Some people are really into scoring, and some people are happy with just playing the game more lightly to clear it. It’s curious how this is a title that can appeal to both types of people.
(Otsuka) Because it’s possible to just play the game lightly to clear it.
(Ikeda) It’s possible if you don’t pick up the laser. Because it’s not as difficult as Gradius or R-Type.
Police Absence
(Interviewer) Taking all these things into account, there’s a theory that Darius wasn’t actually played all that much back in the day. When the PS4 version came out on Arcade Archives, the so called “Darius Police” didn’t come out on social media.
(Ikeda) They didn’t, did they. When the Old Version was completely replaced by the New Version, they didn’t really delve into that. The original had been running for a year, so reviving it was difficult since it was a three-screen cabinet. That’s why there weren’t as many people who played it compared to Gradius II or R-Type.
(Otsuka) There’s a Darius cabinet at Mikado right now, how does it do?
(Ikeda) It’s actually not bad, it brings in good money. There aren’t many places that still have them, so it kind of feels like having it out to play on the anniversary. I think the income it always brought in at Try Amusement Center was good too, since they had it running consistently since ’95. It brought in good money, so they had it running. Mikado is grateful that people come in to play it, and no one’s talking about how boring The Ninja Warriors is anymore! (Laughs) Darius II is too harsh, so no one plays it. Truly, no one plays Darius II. It’s the least popular Darius game.
(Otsuka) It’s certainly true that Darius itself is a bit of a specialty game. It has great music and graphics, but it was a game that was born from a mutation and didn’t enrich arcades for very long. It’s just that it’s being talked about as though it’s received an unusually high appraisal.
(Ikeda) But isn’t it really like Led Zeppelin in that regard? People only started evaluating them favorably later on. I think it’s amazing from a mechanical standpoint, maybe the best? Everything after that was more generic.
(Otsuka) I wonder if it’s all down to the specialty of the hardware, atmosphere, music, and graphics.
(Ikeda) If not for Darius, the 2nd year of middle school feeling of Taito’s later shooting games probably wouldn’t have happened.
The Bland Sequel
(Interviewer) I wonder why Darius II went in such a pop direction?
(Otsuka) I think that was due to reflection on the first Darius game, in all sorts of ways. If the games had stayed dark like that, the revenue probably wouldn’t have been as good. Apart from the sense of achievement of the people who made the game, the harsh reality is that it didn’t bring in much revenue. Perhaps it was because the first game was too hardcore.
(Ikeda) When it was compared to Gradius, it just didn’t have as catchy of songs. Back in elementary school, it was hard to grasp music that enjoys playing around with rhythm like it is now. So maybe that’s why the music in Darius II is so much more upbeat, even though there are some darker songs as well.
(Interviewer) Darius II has a reputation of being appreciated because of the quality of its home ports.
(Ikeda) Since there are no checkpoints in Darius II, it’s basically over if you die. That’s because you come back completely powered down, and the power-up locations are completely fixed throughout the game. You can’t recover if you die in a bad location.
(Otsuka) You just have to give that run up.
(Ikeda) There was actually a famous line from the Gamest strategy guide for Darius II: It’s easy if you don’t die. It really was a bland game.
(Otsuka) It feels like Taito’s games suddenly discovered a sense of design. It’s crazy that they went all in on this sci-fi marine life theme so suddenly.
(Interviewer) Do you remember anything about any of the other games you were playing at this time?
(Ikeda) Twin Cobra (Kyukyoku Tiger), of course! I played it so much that it was like I’d never played a game that good before! (Laughs)
(Interviewer) Toaplan games are addictive! (Laughs)
(Ikeda) Twin Cobra was so fun! It really was! And R-Type was too!
(Otsuka) I played everything. I got super into pretty much anything that came out.
The End of Namco’s Golden Age
(Ikeda) But Namco games got really boring during this era!
(Everyone laughs)
(Ikeda) I thought Dragon Spirit was boring from the first time I saw it.
(Otsuka) There are subtleties to it, things that tickle the otaku spirit. Dragon Spirit does that in the same that that a game like Bravoman does. There was a culture of listening to “Radio is American” (Abbreviated to “Rajiame”, a variety radio program that ran from 1981 to 1986 and was run by Namco) or reading Newtype Magazine while playing it. You can’t really deny that. Somewhere in your heart, you’re thinking “Is this really fun?” while you’re playing it. But it was like you couldn’t listen to that radio program if you didn’t accept this as you played the game.
(Ikeda) I played Namco games pretty seriously up until Return of Ishtar, but then they really just got boring. I mean, when I saw someone wrote that there was a location test going on for a sequel to Bosconian in the arcade notebook at the Carrot in Kameari, I thought “Seriously?!” When I went to check it out, I was really disappointed when I saw Blast Off, and just went home! (Laughs)
(Otsuka) But even back then, there was something that stood out about Namco’s games. For example, Bravoman had the extending hand. Wonder Momo had elements of the magical girl genre of that era. There was something about those games. And looking at them as a whole, you couldn’t deny it.
(Ikeda) I know what you mean.
(Otsuka) It was like if you didn’t acknowledge that, you couldn’t read Newtype or buy Namco merch. There was a period where I was a devotee.
(Ikeda) Return of Ishtar is probably where my love affair with Namco ended, and my affair with Konami began.
(Interviewer) It felt like Namco’s golden age was coming to an end.
(Ikeda) You could tell from the fact that All About Namco only had two issues.
(Otsuka) People, especially Japanese, tend to idealize not just past game titles, but just the past in general. They often say things like “Those were the good old days,” but they weren’t! What was so good about them? (Laughs)
(Interviewer) That’s just wandering about aimlessly.
The Famicom Bubble
(Ikeda) After that all of the top developers went over to making Famicom games because it was so profitable. It would have been way better for Tecmo if they’d done that.
(Otsuka) Well now that we’re adults, we understand things like how much it costs to develop a mobile game. So imagine a game costing 10 million yen to develop, and it only sells 10,000 copies because it’s a shitty game. That’s rough! (Laughs)
(Everyone Laughs)
(Ikeda) It seems like the idea that the Famicom boom lowered the quality of arcade games is true. Actually, around this time, really great games like Famista were being released on the Famicom, while Namco’s arcade games were gradually getting worse. The Famicom was where the good games were, by comparison. Tecmo did Rygar (Argos no Senshi), Solomon’s Key, and Bomb Jack…so how did Gemini Wing end up the way it did? It’s like, who the hell colored that seal green?! (Laughs)
(Everyone Laughs)
(Otsuka) Normally, when a company makes a decision for a game based on planning, that company’s top development talent would be focused on the Famicom.
(Ikeda) That’s why they put such great titles out on the Famicom, like Captain Tsubasa.
(Otsuka) And then whoever is left gets put on the arcade games, and they end up coloring seals green! (Laughs)
(Ikeda) I really do wonder why they colored that walrus green? (Laughs)
(Otsuka) That’s because the amount of money it brings back into the company is vastly different between the two.
(Ikeda) Back then Tecmo had a telephone service that I’d call like every day to get new information on games. They talked about games like Gemini Wing coming out, and it sounded interesting just from hearing about the systems. You’d collect different types of gun balls and use them strategically. But when I actually played it, it was like…this is so boring! (Laughs) It’s still running at Mikado, and I’ll never be able to forget about it. Tecmo’s quality really did take a dip. That’s why Twin Cobra (Kyukyoku Tiger) was so much fun; It’s simple. They didn’t have enough money to enter the Famicom market, so they made a lot of cool arcade games.
(Interviewer) The opposite phenomenon also happened; The Famicom got so popular that there were barriers to entry.
(Ikeda) You had to invest billions of yen to get into it, or something.
(Otsuka) It’s tough being a small company.
(Ikeda) It was the same for Technos Japan: As soon as they released Double Dragon in 1987, the quality of their arcade games suddenly tanked! (Laughs) But they had plenty of good ones on home consoles, like the Dodgeball ones. Just look at how many Kunio-kun games were released.
(Otsuka) Because those Kunio-kun dodgeball games were really well balanced and easy to play.
(Ikeda) Yet after Double Dragon, the quality of their arcade games started to decline.
The PC Engine Boom
(Otsuka) Back then there were Famicom games, other home console games, and arcade games. It was a time when companies had to produce a lot of titles, leading to a lot of cheaply made games. Deciding where to allocate top talent was crucial for companies. It makes sense that they’d allocate more people to the consumer market, where the sales numbers were higher. Personally, I’ve been into PC Engine games recently, and they’re all such good ports. They have a lot of effort put into them.
(Interviewer) The Namco titles were very well made.
(Otsuka) They’re so well made that it’s ridiculous.
(Ikeda) In the end, since Nintendo imposed restrictions on the number of games, it was a period where Namco and Hudson basically formed a tag-team to defeat them.
(Otsuka) That’s why you can really feel how serious they were. Each game has an overwhelmingly high level of quality.
(Ikeda) Hudson and Namco having those links to arcade games covered all fronts. Sega, of course, did their own thing. Even though they could have just ported Thunder Blade normally, they did something like Super Thunder Blade. Everyone wanted them to port Space Harrier, but they messed up with Space Harrier II! (Laughs) And yet, Altered Beast was a good port. They were saying that they were going to knock it out of the park, and everyone else was like “What the hell are you doing?!”
(Interviewer) Altered Beast was being ported in near real-time to the arcade version, so they put all they had into it! (Laughs)
(Ikeda) It’s pretty arcade perfect! Even though it’s kind of a boring game! (Laughs) Around that time, R-Type was coming out in the early days of the PC Engine. It came out in March 1988, and I think that game was pretty amazing.
(Otsuka) Recently I’ve actually been playing PC Engine games like crazy, and I noticed that they still have that arcade feel. They manage to balance both arcade and PC games well. Well, putting the PC Engine talk aside for now…
(Ikeda) We’re really getting into the PC Engine talk! (Laughs)
(Interviewer) Did you play the PC Engine a lot back then?
(Otsuka) I didn’t have one myself, so I played it a lot at a friend’s house. It was a rank up, in terms of hardware. I was really shocked when Jaseiken Necromancer came out.
(Ikeda) I think maybe that was January 17th?
(Otsuka) Jaseiken Necromancer was a little bit different than your typical JRPG, it had a bit of a darker feel to it. For a game with a world like that to come out…it was so different from Dragon Quest or Wizardry, or other similar games of that time. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to buy that game and play it in real-time.
(Ikeda) I got it, because I got a perfect score on my English test! (Laughs) Jaseiken Necromancer was crazy. It was released about 10 days before Dragon Quest III, so I had to beat it quickly.
(Otsuka) PC Engine was a rank above the Famicom, even with the Disk System. Its games were very close to the arcade versions. And at that time, arcade games were the best there were.
(Interviewer) Arcade games were like the F1 of the video game world.
(Otsuka) In that way, the PC Engine was kind of like an F3000. I really liked going to my friend’s house to play it. Sega had its own vibe, maybe a more adult one, and it had a unique feel because it was on its own unique hardware. With the PC Engine, you could see the future of arcade and PC gaming.
Single-Screen Darius
(Interviewer) We got into a lot of PC Engine talk but getting back on topic: When it comes to the PC Engine, one of the first titles that comes to mind is Super Darius.
(Ikeda) If not for that game, I wouldn’t have bought a PC Engine CD-ROM. Back then it was about 60,000 yen, and I used all my New Years gift money to buy it. It used “DA” to get the same music as the arcade game. I was like “What the hell is ‘DA’?”, but it was audio streaming off the CD! It was synchronized, so it sounded the same. It was like cheating! (Laughs)
(Interviewer) But that port managed to express the greatness of Darius with a single screen. It made you realize that the game was great even without 3 screens.
(Ikeda) We talked about that earlier.
(Otsuka) If I was one of the former developers of the game, I would have been a bit disappointed!
The Genius that is Hisayoshi Ogura
(Ikeda) But Hisayoshi Ogura comes to mind when you think of Darius. He hasn’t been working at Taito for awhile for various reasons, but he’s a genius. He’s right up there with Jimi Hendrix. With everything Ogura has done, I just don’t sweat the details when it comes to his work. Darius is a game that creates a very singular world for itself. Even though Dariusburst started doing collaborations with other STGs recently, which I think isn’t that great, but…
(Interviewer) That’s true. It doesn’t show much pride in a series with such a storied history.
(Ikeda) It’s a loss for them. I thought it was a bit careless.
(Interviewer) Ogura’s music is one of the axes that Darius rests on. The people involved in game soundtracks at that time had sort of a mysterious aura.
(Ikeda) Yeah. He wanted to do film scores, but did game soundtracks instead…or things didn’t go well for him in anime, so he went to games…or something like that.
(Interviewer) Through some circumstances, Ogura decided to fully commit himself to game music.
(Ikeda) In the ‘70s and ‘80s, or even with old overseas games, the artwork and design on just a single marquee were incredibly memorable. Because games were still such a new industry, people from entirely different fields were working in it, which made it look really cool and still have a unique charm when we see it today. This also applies to the music of games like Darius. But Zuntata had to fight against that legacy. Developers always have aspects of both shadow and light. But since most of them aren’t geniuses like Ogura, they inevitably end up going in easier directions, like collaborations.
(Interviewer) I feel like Ogura might have been the person who was really trying to bring about a revolution in game sound during that era.
(Ikeda) Yeah, that might have been the beginning of it. After all, even Dragon Quest borrowed the talents of Koichi Sugiyama.
(Otsuka) Well, in Sugiyama’s case, it was a bit crazy because he actually sent a postcard in himself! (Laughs)
(Interviewer) Speaking of RPGS, the association of that genre with orchestral soundtracks is due to Sugiyama’s contributions.
(Otsuka) Koichi Sugiyama was really quite eccentric.
Cool Games Are Made by Crazy People
(Ikeda) It’s crazy, isn’t it? With Darius, they went two or three levels beyond the point that they shouldn’t have crossed, and they just went ahead with making something that couldn’t properly be physically delivered to a location. They knew that, but they did it anyway. You have to wonder, who’s going to maintain this?
(Otsuka) When it comes to STGs or action games, crazy developers always make a really crazy first game. They don’t succeed with their second or third game; they have this vision from the very beginning and succeed with their first game. I think that the type of person who can create an origin tends to have a few screws loose.
(Ikeda) And they don’t seem to have any doubts about it either.
(Otsuka) When you look at the lineage of Taito and see how Darius emerged so suddenly, you can tell lit was created by some pretty eccentric people. They must have had a great time making it, feeling like they were creating something truly unique in the world. In our own work, we often have conflicts and questions about how to proceed with different departments. But somehow, they must have had this “let’s do it all night long!” sort of attitude, and just went ahead with it.
(Ikeda) Like naming a game “Salamander”! (Laughs)
(Interviewer) It’s like they were up until 3 AM.
(Ikeda) It was just full steam ahead!
(Otsuka) It was like “Alright, if you’re going to do that, then I’ll show you what I can do too!” I can only think that’s how it all went.
(Ikeda) They were much calmer during Darius II, and that’s why it’s not as interesting.
(Interviewer) They were doing proper marketing, and things like that! (Laughs)
(Ikeda) They did things like question whether two screens wouldn’t be good enough, so that it could fit into smaller arcades. But what about the arcades that already bought Darius 1 cabinets? The response was basically, “It’s fine, we’ll make a three-screen version!” (Laughs)
(Otsuka) This is very common throughout history. Even with plastic model kits, they started off releasing these crazy things. And then the next thing was much more grounded.
(Interviewer) This theory about Darius being created through sheer momentum is a very interesting one.
(Otsuka) They probably weren’t very relaxed when they were making it, so after they finished, I suspect they had so much to look back on that they could have gone on Shikujiri Sensei (a variety TV show) or something. They probably had so much passion and intensity that they couldn’t stop to calmly look back on it all during the process.
(Ikeda) It might be that this miraculous balance resulted in something great.
(Otsuka) After bowing and apologizing after saying “We can’t possibly create a cabinet based on this design!”, they could have had drinks and the next day come back and said, “It’s done!” And then said, “Thank you, Dad!” (Laughs) It makes you imagine a microcosm of Japan during the period of rapid economic growth. I really felt that when I had that cabinet stripped down in the room where I was living. When I hear Ikeda talk about the boards, they were really haphazard, right? It seems like they weren’t properly made.
(Ikeda) I don’t think they were. I believe they were pretty haphazardly thrown together.
(Otsuka) It feels like they had this attitude of “It’s okay if we mess up with this” and moved forward with that.
(Interviewer) When you think back to Taito during that period, they were developing quite a few games for outside companies. So, Taito’s own in-house development might have a different flavor to it.
(Ikeda) That may have been true. When it comes to what was the next Taito shooting game that actually sold well after Space Invaders, it was Darius. That gap was quite a bit shorter than the time that Virtua Fighter 5 has been running for! (Laughs)
(Otsuka) This is getting a bit off topic, but there are quite a few projects that look back at the arcade games of the ‘70s, ‘80s’, and ‘90s, in various forms. When you think about it, the period when home consoles and arcades were booming was only about 10 to 20 years, not even 20 years. When something hits just over 10 years people call that “retro,” and it kind of makes me feel a bit frustrated.
(Ikeda) That’s totally different than how it works in the world of music. It’s even totally different in the world of pro wrestling.
(Otsuka) There’s such an amazing history there, but it’s not so old as to be called “vintage”.
(Ikeda) Yeah, it’s totally different in the music world.
An Interesting Game is…
(Ikeda) Otsuka and I talk about this a lot, but don’t you think that there aren’t many very interesting arcade games now, are there?
(Everyone Laughs)
(Ikeda) It’s difficult to say just what makes a game “interesting”, but what stands out about early Namco is that everything interesting —all of it. This is what made Namco so amazing. It wasn’t until later, with games like Star Blade, that they started to disappoint. There are definitely fewer interesting games now. Absolutely.
(Otsuka) With old games, there’s a nostalgic bias, making you tweet about a game you have good memories of as if it were an interesting game. But when you actually put those supposedly interesting games into an arcade like Mikado, they often aren’t that interesting at all. If a game were truly interesting, everyone would play it. When you think about it that way, there really are very few truly interesting games.
(Ikeda) Some truly interesting games are ones like Gradius II, Street Fighter II, and Final Fight. Akira Nishitani is really amazing, because he made a couple of those.
(Otsuka) With Street Fighter II, they were completely serious about making a hit, meticulously crafting it. Even though there was Street Fighter I, with the involvement of Akiman, they aimed to create a moment that would change the world in one go.
(Ikeda) The fighting game genre has such a rich history, with titles like Data East’s Karate Champ and Konami’s Yie Ar Kung-Fu, but Street Fighter II may be the most convincing title of them all. There’s nothing off about it.
(Otsuka) By bringing in Akira Yasuda, who was originally an animator, they tapped into his genius, which was probably the beginning of it all. Street Fighter II was an adventurous project, but it was also ambitious. They were determined to be victorious. Gradius also had quite a few mysteries, personally speaking. For such a game to suddenly spring into the world is quite an amazing feat.
(Ikeda) I’m not even sure how a game like that was able to come out of Scramble.
(Otsuka) After Gradius came Salamander. And with how that game’s world changed, the developers at Konami were pretty crazy at that time.
(Ikeda) I think part of it might have just been coincidence, though. Because the person who created Gradius went on to create A-JAX next. That’s a really boring game.
(Otsuka) Maybe developers only get one of those games in a lifetime! (Laughs)
(Ikeda) I was really shocked when I heard the same person made both Gradius 1 and A-JAX. How in the hell did that happen?!
The Level of Perfection in Gradius II
(Interviewer) Gradius II was the perfect title for hardcore gamers of its time.
(Ikeda) It was crazy. How was it that it felt so perfect? Normally, you’d end up with something like Gradius III, which was stupidly difficult.
(Otsuka) The developers must have been incredibly sharp and focused. Within a very short timeframe, they had a clear sense of purpose and direction. They were able to see things clearly as they worked on it.
(Ikeda) It was the same for R-Type too. I thought that game was also pretty amazing. It was an out-of-place artifact.
(Otsuka) R-Type really didn’t waver from the very first level. They established the feel of the game’s world right there, without wavering. And then they applied it consistently throughout the rest of the game.
(Ikeda) There were charge shots in games up until that point, but it was amazing in R-Type because it boldly gave you a type of attack that you didn’t get in Gradius or Darius.
(Otsuka) Vertical shooters ultimately end up relying on the game mechanics, including bullet hell. But in horizontal shooters, the world-building and narrative are also crucial. It may be a part of the action game flow, but they have a unique style in that way.
(Ikeda) With side-scrolling games, you have to draw two sets of images in the end: The foreground and the background. So it takes more time and effort. That means that they really can’t afford to fail.
(Otsuka) In that context, Darius combines outer space and the ocean. I’ve never thought about wanting to fight whales in space. But when you put it that way, I might actually want to.
(Ikeda) Normally, games turned out like Night Striker or After Burner, right? Darius is very unique.
The Silhouette of a Giant Battleship
(Interviewer) And former Tatsunoko Productions employees worked on the designs, based on that concept.
(Otsuka) Ah, yeah. They were really surprising and astonishing mecha designs.
(Ikeda) The design in the first game is probably the best, right? Especially the boss designs.
(Otsuka) The basics of design are that you should be able to recognize something by its silhouette. It’s the same with Gundam; when you make it completely black, you should still be able to tell if it’s a Zaku, the Gundam, or some other type of Gundam. In Darius, the silhouettes stand out, and you can tell what the enemies are. There aren’t any similar designs; despite everything, they’re all different.
(Ikeda) Even now, designs like the sea anemone are so cool. Don’t you think that a sharp, cutting-edge design? The coelacanth too, for example.
(Otsuka) Another amazing thing is that, even though the game is completely side-scrolling, bosses like Electric Fan aren’t viewed from the side, but from an oblique top-down perspective.
(Ikeda) It’s all about the momentum that everyone had working on it, like I said. No one was getting any sleep.
(Otsuka) It does feel that way.
(Ikeda) It’s like they were all drunk on something when making it. There was definitely something driving them.
(Otsuka) It wasn’t just about whether it was interesting or not; the creators’ drunken enthusiasm comes through in that cabinet, and we get pulled in by that energy.
(Ikeda) It’s probably something indescribable that draws us in.
(Otsuka) That’s why I think it’s such a passionate game. It’s true that we were drawn to that passion, and without it, I probably wouldn’t have written a single novel.
(Ikeda) People are drawn to meticulous games like Gradius II, and also those that feel like they were created in a state of drunken enthusiasm.
(Otsuka) Darius is a quirky game, but I still love it.
(Ikeda) I love it too, for just that. The reasons come later; it’s the sense of craziness from the creators that really draws you in.
(Otsuka) Darius, from our perspective, was probably made with an insanely high level of enthusiasm. Like a high school culture festival project.
(Ikeda) It’s like how Gamest was back then. It was the biggest publication for arcade games at the time, and if Gamest said something was great, as kids, we had to bet on it.
(Otsuka) After that, I think Taito wanted to build on the success of that culture festival-like enthusiasm by creating the Extra Version. Without that momentum, a game like that couldn’t have been made.
(Ikeda) The competition was really fierce in 1987, and while Darius might have done well initially, it must have been tough. Considering its cost, it’s interesting to think about how much revenue Darius actually generated. I was still in middle school back then, so I wasn’t working at an arcade and didn’t have the exact numbers.
(Otsuka) I think it was quite tough. The actual cabinet cost over 1 million yen, and it wasn’t like you could make a huge profit from it quickly. Plus, each play session was fairly long.
Mikado’s Cabinet Maintenance
(Ikeda) At Mikado, we originally were focused on using authentic parts for the Darius cabinet, maintaining Toei’s 19-inch monitors. However, when we couldn’t source parts from the manufacturer anymore, we turned to the 19-inch monitors in the MV4 Neo Geo MVS cabinets, which were incredibly cheap around 2006 when Mikado opened in Shinjuku. So, although I might get criticized for this, we broke those cabinets down and kept only the monitors, keeping them in stock as spare parts. The monitors were from Nanao or Sanwa, and depending on the period, the monitors used would vary. These monitors were incredibly durable, unlike the original Toei ones, which would break down quickly. The Nanao and Sanwa monitors never broke, so Mikado’s cabinet has monitors from various manufacturers! (Laughs) However, they don’t fit in there perfectly. Using monitors from other manufacturers has made it much more durable. Back then, I used to search for 19-inch monitors on Yahoo Auctions almost every day. But now I hardly have to go through all that trouble. We adjust the cabinets in cooperation with the players.
(Otsuka) When I wrote “The End of Arcadia”, I extensively described the struggle of rebuilding arcade cabinets. I didn’t know Ikeda back then, so I had to research and write based on my imagination. Nowadays, I could write those parts with more realism. But even if I added more realistic details, the main storyline wouldn’t change. That’s the difficult part.
The Ultimate Form of Machines
(Ikeda) Darius, without a doubt, represents the ultimate form of arcade games as machines, continuing from the ‘70s and ‘80s. But modern members of Zuntata unfortunately don’t talk about this, they tend to focus on sound sources and those sorts of topics. But it’s really about the hardware, the mechanics. It’s a hardware-based game. Using general-purpose devices like sticks and buttons, the dedicated cabinet games have an irresistible appeal. That’s what I think.
(Otsuka) Adding on the headphone jack shows that they were particular about the sound. So it’s like a high school cultural festival where the students dreamed big.
(Ikeda) To put it calmly, they were imagining the kind of immersive experience we now have with 4DX, even back then.
(Otsuka) They probably thought this would change the world of arcades forever.
(Ikeda) If they had taken it one step further, the cabinets might have had effects like smoke, or water coming out.
(Otsuka) It wasn’t just a table style cabinet; it was something closer to an attraction. They probably had a firm belief that they could create something beyond what had been done before. That’s just my imagination, of course, but it’s plausible.
(Ikeda) We can only speculate, after all.
(Otsuka) I feel like it’s not far from the truth, though. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made something like that. And the company wouldn’t have funded it. Without that level of enthusiasm, they wouldn’t have been able to secure the money.
(Ikeda) There are fewer units now than there were back then, but they’ve still been running for a long time. It makes you think that it’s really impressive. The game from 1987 is really something special. It wasn’t until the resolution of modern home consoles that it could finally be ported. The fact that they were creating something like that way back in 1987 is incredible. You couldn’t achieve that kind of display resolution back then. They were probably working with incredible passion and enthusiasm to create something extraordinary.
(July 21st 2017, Takadanobaba Mikado)