The music of Darius Gaiden

One of the great shoot 'em ups includes a tremendous soundtrack unlike that of its contemporaries, and it's part of what makes this game such a classic.

This column is “The music of,” in which I’ll go into detail on the soundtrack or a piece of music from a video game. Previous entries in the series can be found through this link.

Darius was a notable shoot ‘em up franchise from the start. Even if the quality of the early games didn’t match what was to come — nor did it equal the quality of many contemporary horizontal shoot ‘em ups — it was still this huge spectacle that drew the eye. Darius arcade cabinets used a three-monitor display to create a massive horizontal playfield, but not only that, Taito’s engineers figured out a way to make it appear as if the three monitors were all next to each other to create a seamless image — being right next to each other is something CRT monitors can’t do without color distortions due to magnetic interference, but a system of half-mirrors reflected the “A” and “C” monitors on the sides of the central “B” monitor, giving the illusion of a single, seamless image. An impressive feat, that, and a large part of why the arcade version of Darius is so much more beloved than the home versions that inherently lack this kind of wow factor.

One other thing that is less remarked upon since it’s less obvious — but also plays into this idea that home ports were always going to be at a disadvantage compared to the arcade original — is that the Darius cabinet also focused quite a bit on sound quality. The cabinet came standard with headphone jacks, as well as volume controls for the left and right sound channels. There were speakers beneath the bench, which created a sound- and rumble-based feedback state that Taito referred to as “body sonic,” according to a feature in a 1987 issue of Japanese gaming magazine, BEEP! This led to a soundtrack that was developed with these vibrations in mind: bass plays a huge role in Darius’ soundtrack, and you can feel, rather than just see, the bosses approach. Given the bosses are so massive and your ship, the Silver Hawk, is pretty standard shoot ‘em up ship size, those extra vibrations, along with the screen size, sold people on the epic scale of what was very much an R-Type- and Gradius-influenced game with aquatic visual influences.

Sound and music has always been central to Darius and part of the appeal, but it has maybe never been as central, nor as incredible to listen to, as it is in Darius Gaiden. The fifth shoot ‘em up in the series released in arcades in 1994, and it was not notable because of its display setup or how many speakers it had. Darius Gaiden is remembered mostly for just how ridiculously great it is on its own merits, its excellent use of 2D sprites and pre-rendered 3D objects, and its soundtrack. You don’t have to be in the arcade to appreciate what this soundtrack was doing; you don’t even have to be listening to the original version of the songs for that.

The soundtrack of Darius Gaiden was composed by Hisayoshi Ogura, who also composed the soundtrack to the original arcade game and was the sound director for the Game Boy release. Ogura was a member of Taito’s sound team, the “house band” known as Zuntata. While Zuntata is still the house band of Taito, the relationship is different than it used to be, as are its members: Ogura, among others, is no longer with Zuntata and hasn’t been for ages now.

Ogura’s compositions were often experimental in nature, and focused on electronica, both of which came into play for the soundtrack to Gaiden. Many shoot ‘em ups of the era — meaning, the early-to-mid-90s — had used the enhanced audio capabilities of the day’s hardware to compose some killer metal and hard rock soundtracks. Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder, for instance, a pair of PC Engine CD/Turbografx CD STGs developed by Red Company and released in 1992 and 1993, respectively, went all-in on the console’s use of Red Book audio, which the CD storage format allowed. This love for metal soundtracks has extended into the present, too, as fans of games like Danmaku Unlimited 3 or Steredenn are aware: it is not, by any means, the musical genre of shoot ‘em ups, but it’s prevalent enough, and the two go back decades back at this point.

Not Darius Gaiden, though. Sure, it has some driving tracks, just like a hard rock or metal STG soundtrack would, but musically, tonally, it all went in a far different direction. The electronica, the clear experimentation, the literal opera singer, the focus on creating ambiance — this is a soundtrack that manages to remind me both of some of what various Metroid games were attempting with their soundscapes, while also creating a sound that it would not surprise me one bit to learn inspired the opera sequence from The Fifth Element. You know, with the blue alien Diva, doing the high-energy literal song-and-dance routine, the thing that was so out there and beautiful and strange and absolutely perfect for its sci-fi setting? Darius Gaiden released three years before The Fifth Element, and they synced those same sounds and vibes up to your gameplay in a shooter.

“Visionnerz” is the track that sets the stage for it all. On the official soundtrack, it’s a nearly nine-and-a-half-minute song, the length of which has much to do with how it’s used in Darius Gaiden itself. It’s the opening track for the first stage — stage A, by Darius’ reckoning — and while it sounds different than its contemporaries from the start, that feeling truly hits less than a minute in, when the vocals begin at the 48-second mark. “Close your eyes” comes the whisper of a woman, “Close your head.” The intensity of the vocals will increase as the game progresses, with the whispers returning as a nod to “Visionnerz” in later tracks, yes, but there are also plenty of moments where there is full-throated singing from the same vocalist, who is, again, an opera singer.

“Visionnerz” isn’t just the flag-planting track used in the first stage, but also serves as a transition point into the second stage, whether you choose B or C for your next stop in this branching-path STG. It hits a bit of a lull, energy-wise, as the first boss fight against a screen-filling yellow fish-shaped spaceship named the “Golden Ogre” comes to a close, but then ramps up with an aggressive explosion of sound that hits as the Silver Hawk begins its hyperspeed journey to the next stage, where the next phase of the song “Visionnerz” picks up. It’s an incredible moment in-game, and also serves as confirmation to you that yes, the soundtrack is synced up to the gameplay and your progress, which would continue throughout.

Ogura and Zuntata achieved this feat by staying in constant communication with the rest of the development team, which was not the norm. As Ogura explained in an interview that was included in the 2009 guidebook, Darius Odyssey, “Darius Gaiden was a special case. For example, synchronization was applied consciously to both the concepts, screens, and sounds. The sound direction was adjusted by constantly communicating with the programmers. The last stage begins with no music but only sound effects first, and then the music starts when the climax arrives.” And it’s a concept that Darius would reuse in Dariusburst, as Katsuhisa Ishikawa, in the same interview, said the idea was borrowed directly from Ogura’s work with Gaiden.

Ogura is on the record as saying, he composes music “with the game” rather than “for the game,” and Darius Gaiden is one such example. It’s amusing to see this soundtrack described as an ill fit for Darius or for shoot ‘em ups in general by some critics, considering how involved Zuntata was every step of the way, and how Ogura was determined to develop compositions that would work in conjunction with what was being seen on screen. Entire chunks of Darius Gaiden look as if they are taking place in some kind of cosmic dreamscape — what’s real, is the pilot of the Silver Hawk suffering from some kind of space madness or simply seeing illusions? This was an intentional decision by the developers, to make these abstract backgrounds without much in-game explanation, and the driving force behind this design was simply that the powerful F3 board Taito was using could pull it off. The developers could, so they did, and the music, by way of the Jungian psychology that inspired both its ambiance and the lyrics sung by its opera vocalist, perfectly matches the vibes such experimentation created.

Those lyrics are directives and warnings, and, one bit from the end of “Visionnerz” translated from the original Japanese into English, state, “What you can see with your eyes is not always the truth. The truth lies elsewhere.” In addition, “about half” of the game’s 15 tracks have titles related to psychology terms. “I turned Psychology into music. Or perhaps the music is a visualization of those concepts. You could say that Jungian psychology was the perfect subject to refine my fictional concepts,” Ogura told VGM Online back in 2010. This is all much more fascinating to consider than when some games, like Compile’s Blazing Lazers, would have kind of out there stage design all of a sudden, where the appropriate reaction was just “oh this is cool” or “what’s going on here?” Ill fitting? Maybe the world just wasn’t used to Ogura’s particular level of attention yet, but the industry would certainly shift toward this kind of dynamic sound that went beyond the sounds being made and more toward why those specific sounds were made.

This is a whole lot about “Visionnerz,” specifically, but most of the rest of the soundtrack builds or feeds off of it, so there’s a reason for that. “E.E.G.” returns to concepts introduced by “Visionnerz,” just at a quicker pace and with some different instrumentation, but the connection is undeniably there. “SELF,” the game’s end track that slows everything down — synths, operatic singing, drums, all of it — despite being the theme for the finale stage before the climactic battle against the fishy forces of evil. And what it’s slowing down is, just like with “E.E.G.,” clearly related to what you heard from “Visionnerz,” only now with some additional references from tracks like “FAKE,” which also pulled from “Visionnerz” except in the opposite direction, with intentionally more aggressive sounds that aren’t as easy on the ears, nor as “natural” sounding. “SELF” is the soundtrack and its themes coming full circle, the completion of the audio journey the Silver Hawk started out on, directly tied to the visual one you’ve been guiding.

Darius Gaiden’s soundtrack has a few different forms. There’s the arcade original, which released on CD courtesy Pony Canyon back in 1994 when the game released. That edition is available for purchase digitally since 2012, and can be streamed on Spotify with a subscription, as well. There’s also the arranged version released for the home console editions of Darius Gaiden on the Sega Saturn and Playstation, which you could choose to listen to during your playthrough instead of the original. “Visionnerz” has the vocals hit about 10 seconds later in this edition, and while the sounds are different (especially in between the singing), the same kind of vibe is achieved in the end.

I’m less partial to this version, as it feels a little less experimental at times, and while the energy at times feels higher, this isn’t always the case: the transition from Stage A to either B or C, for instance, is lacking some of the punch that made it stand out so much in the arcade original. Still, though, if you didn’t know of any other sound there could be here instead, you’d come away plenty impressed with what is still very much different than the norma for STGs.

The most significant departure is found on the retail CD release, The Last Kiss. This is a full arrangement album for Darius Gaiden, played by Zuntata without any hardware considerations needing to be made in its creation, and without the syncing of music and gameplay found in-game. It’s excellent, the kind of arrangement album that it would be lovely to have a physical copy of rather than just streaming it, because there’s just so much going on here that deserves a higher sound quality than streaming allows for. It removes some of the more ambient bits and treats this more like a record you’d sit around listening to at home, which makes sense for reasons that don’t require elaborating on. Would it work with the game as well as the music it’s an arrangement of? No, but that’s not it’s purpose; both succeed at what they were created for. Their vision, if you will, was seen through.

Darius Gaiden is one of the great shoot ‘em ups, the one that changed Darius’ trajectory from that of a pretty decent STG franchise that was at its best in arcades to one that would include multiple beloved entries regardless of where you experienced them. Its soundtrack is no small part of that, as intertwined with everything you’re seeing and experiencing on-screen as it is, and that was all by design. Luckily, Darius Gaiden is just as available as its streamable soundtrack and arrangements these days, as it’s part of the M2-developed Darius Cozmic Collection, which is available in its full form on the Nintendo Switch and Playstation 4, and the arcade-only portion of the collection is available for purchase on Steam as well. If you’ve never experienced Darius Gaiden before, your senses are missing out.

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