Darius
Image: Taito

Hamster Corp has announced that Taito's shoot 'em up Darius is this week's Arcade Archives game for Switch (as spotted by Nintendo Everything). It will be available to buy digitally from today (October 6th) on the Nintendo Switch eShop.

The horizontal scroller was originally released in Japanese arcades in 1986 as an enormous cabinet that featured three monitors and a set of mirrors to create a widescreen effect. It later spawned several sequels and spin-offs for the arcade and home consoles, including G-Darius and Darius Twin.

Apart from its distinctive three-screen setup, Darius also featured robotic fish instead of the traditional mecha seen in most shoot 'em ups. In a Gamest interview (translated by Shmupulations), Taito planner Akira Fujita accepted responsibility for this:

"That was my idea. Before Darius, I had this idea of making a STG where you would fight a battleship at the end of each stage, and once we decided on the 3-screen setup, I suddenly had an additional insight: since mecha/machine designs have already been used a lot in STGs, using fish could be a really interesting way to spice things up…"

The original Darius is already available to buy on PS4 as part of Arcade Archives and is also included on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Mini and as a part of the Darius Cozmic Collection. The Arcade Archives' Switch version, similar to its PS4 counterpart, therefore represents a cheaper solution to playing the game.

It will only set you back £6.29/$7.99/€6.99, and will also include the "Darius Extra Version", a rebalanced and updated version of the game. So, if you feel like blasting away some robot fish, this one's for you!

What's your favourite Darius game? Let us know in the comments!

[source nintendoeverything.com]