1979: Taito Memories II Joukan PS2 \\ All games! Darius II playthrough! Darius II crash!

Going chronologically through all the games in Taito Memories II Joukan for PS2, in the emulator PCSX2 in Windows--then doing a full playthrough of Darius II on Easy. II Joukan is the 3rd of 4 eventual Taito Memories compilations for PS2 in Japan.
My Taito Memories: • smbhax's Taito Memories!
0:00 - start
3:30 - Space Chaser
7:34 - Grand Champion
10:04 - Time Tunnel
21:10 - The Undoukai (aka "Field Day," lit "The Games")
25:42 - Ben Bero Beh
32:34 - Return of the Invaders
46:52 - Ougon no Shiro (aka "Gladiator," "Great Gurianos," lit "Golden Castle")
50:10 - Kick and Run
54:33 - Scramble Formation
1:01:09 - Exzisus
1:05:44 - Super Qix
1:15:07 - Rainbow Islands
1:21:07 - Operation Thunderbolt
1:23:42 - Continental Circus
1:27:46 - Chuka Taisen (aka "Cloud Master")
1:29:55 - Asuka & Asuka
1:34:02 - Special Criminal Investigation
1:50:11 - crashed Darius II! = o
1:57:53 - Champion Wrestler
2:02:03 - Fighting Hawk
2:10:41 - Space Gun
2:13:50 - The Ninja Kids
2:17:33 - Dino Rex
2:22:25 - RayForce
2:36:09 - Bubble Memories
2:51:34 - Darius II playthrough (Easy)
3:18:24 - Darius II ending & credits
I'm a huge hypocrite about that scrolling left/right in a vertical shooter complaint--'cause guess what, Gun Frontier which I just fell in love with a day ago scrolls left/right a bit, and I hadn't even thought about it as I played through the whole thing!!
OH! The other dino fighting game I was thinking of was Primal Rage in Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (PS2). That's...a much better game than Dino Rex. The interview with Dino Rex and Gun Frontier (that's in Taito Memories Gekan) designer/director Takatsuna Senba is shmuplations.c... ; yeah they were supposed to switch to 6 buttons at one point after SFII came out, and nope, the interview doesn't really explain WHY he tried to make Dino Rex. In at least one writer's opinion, it's the game that tanked his game design career bumpcombat.net... . And yeah it's REAL bad; like, pretty much feels unplayable at first blush, anyway. But he was being forced to work ridiculous hours to try to get his designs made (and the outsourced dev team for Dino Rex ended up being let go, so he and some folks at Taito had to scramble to try to get Dino Rex out the door, warts and all--ouch), so it seems like there's a good chance he was kinda burned out on that particular career path at that point anyway.
When watching the credits after clearing Darius II, I noticed that Senba is co-credited with design, and also with art for that game!
The first Darius is NOT in any of the four Taito Memories collections that came out on PS2 in Japan! I wonder if they just couldn't get the three-screen arcade set-up running well enough in emulation on the PS2. (3-screen Darius is now in the Arcade Archives series on PS4, and in M2's "Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade" on PC and PS4; and Arcade Archives has three-screen Darius II, but the Cozmic Collection has just the two-screen version. : P Ehhh but I got the Cozmic Collection because I'd much rather stick to PC these days.)
II Joukan has rotated (tate and reverse tate) screen options for vertical games, first volume of the four to have that option.
7/13/24
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