This week's Arcade Archives release is... Darius II (Taito, 1989)
This only contains one version, the three-screen release. While Taito Milestones 2, recently released on Switch, also has the three-screen release, the previously-released Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade does not, as it only has the more common two-screen version.
Taito Milestones 2 came out fairly recently and, like the previous set, is essentially a collection of Arcade Archives releases bundled together but with some games that don't have individual releases yet. Hamster said they will get them, and here's the first, the rare three-screen version of horizontal shmup Darius II. I'll defer to an expert on this one, so as gosokkyu explains here, the three-screen version was a rarer variant of Darius II as it was intended as a conversion kit for The Ninja Warriors, while the two-screen version was more widely distributed. This means there's a few little differences here and there, but it's less an intentional revision and more just a result of the hardware and screen size changes. Neat to see rare variants of games show up like this!
Anyway, yes, it's time for some tuna sashimi. Reactions on the radar!
