Sagaia - Genesis Game (Retro Fam)

Have you ever heard of the Darius series? No? Well, too bad, because you're missing out on one fine little shooter series if you've never encountered a game where you go around blasting giant mecha-fish. Yes, you read right, MECHA FISH. Believe it or not, Sagaia for the Genesis here is actually a port of the second Darius game made and it changed a bit with the original Darius formula, mainly in removing the checkpoint system we all know and... heh, LOVE (grr). This actually isn't the ONLY port of Darius II, but this is the only one released on a US home console and while the non-US console version definitely looked and sounded better, it wasn't without its issues.Anyway, as a shooter Sagaia is a pretty good game and it demonstrates its coolness in how blisteringly rare it is to find sometimes and the coolness meter just keeps climbing because replay value lies entirely in the game's default difficulty; even on easy, this game will take you awhile to beat. The game play itself is pretty basic as you collect power-ups and shields and such, but Sagaia increases the game play value a bit by having you choose between the two heroes in the game, Proco and Tiat, whose ships differ in how their weapons and ground-bombs start out on and power-up.The graphics are pretty good with lots of fine detail even for the Genesis, though I'd say the biggest problem with Sagaia is the audio transfer. The sound effects aren't too bad, but the music is a combination of being horribly scratchy and.