Darius Alpha (1990). Play online

Summary

Darius Alpha is the turbocharged, mail‑order offshoot of Darius Plus that only 800 lucky fans ever managed to grab. The whole package was a sweep‑stakes giveaway tied to coupons tucked inside the Super Darius and Darius Plus manuals, which instantly turned the HuCard into the most coveted and pricey PC‑Engine artifact.

Instead of a full side‑scroll adventure, Alpha squeezes the entire experience into a relentless boss‑rush: you battle every Plus boss one after another, with no filler stages to break the tension. It’s essentially a glorified test of memorization and fire‑power mastery, aimed squarely at completists.

Bits Laboratory kept the SuperGrafx enhancements, so sprite flicker drops dramatically, and the game throws a quirky challenge—press Select on the title screen and you’re plunged into a four‑minute timer that fuels the frantic pace. For anyone hunting rare TurboGrafx‑16 gems, Darius Alpha feels like a secret badge of honor.

Storyline

After Earth’s resources ran out, humanity colonized a distant world called Darius. The settlers built a thriving society, but peace shattered when the Belser armada of maritime‑shaped ships descended on the system. Their overwhelming firepower wiped out the Darius fleet and bombarded the planet’s satellites, leaving the colonists on the brink of extinction. In the darkness a lone beacon appeared – the Silver Hawk, a sleek single‑pilot fighter that glowed like a phoenix against the dying sky.

Pilots Proco and Tiat were chosen to pilot the Silver Hawk series, using its multi‑weapon capability to strike back at the alien invaders. Their desperate counter‑offensive gave the Darius people a sliver of hope that the end might not be inevitable. The battle forms the core story of Darius Alpha on the TurboGrafx‑16.