Darius Cozmic Collection: Console

A playworthy history lesson about an undervalued shoot-em-up franchise. The collection is technically excellent, while the retro games keep up their fascination til today, mainly because of their imaginative bosses.

These games have aged quite well, not even from gameplay-wise, but even visually. We feel like the price is too high, but if you’re happy with it, you’ll enjoy this nostalgic collection.

M2 has done a solid job bringing this collection together with great emulation across the titles available. It is a real shame that no extras were thrown in to celebrate the history of Darius – a lack of of a gallery is truly shocking. There is also the argument to be made with it missing some games in this collection. Still, what is here is a nice, if expensive, collection of good shmups made for replayability for a niche selection of fans, the curious newcomers or people wanting a trip down memory lane of their childhood video game playing.

Darius Cozmic Collection Console is a must-have for hardcore Darius fans. However, given its shortcomings and steep retail price, it’s not as essential a purchase as the arcade edition of Taito’s shoot-em-up classics.

It's all about the games, and they're still good fun. In fact, Darius Cozmic Collection Console is a marginally easier recommendation than the arcade one; there are five distinct titles here rather than three, and they're all worth playing – even if none of them quite reach the glorious heights of Darius Gaiden.

This is a much-needed collection of iconic shoot 'em ups that, until now, were lost to the sands of time. Each of the games included in this collection is a thrill to play, but it's hard not to compare the number of games included and the lack of extra content with the premium price tag and feel like something is off. A lack of extras could be forgiven if this were a complete collection, but the fact that there are titles missing from this compilation raises red flags on an otherwise stellar set of shooter classics.

Overall, the M2 emulation and menu navigation are certainly strengths of the Darius Cozmic Collection Console, but at the end of the day it feels much more like four titles than nine, given how similar some of these versions are. Some of the games have online rankings, which adds to the replay factor, but there are no historical materials on offer, and the game balancing options are incredibly sparse. There are some decent screen options, and being able to remap all of the buttons is nice, but it’s hard not to see this package of Darius games as being light on firepower. We’ve seen much more robust compilations come to Switch, so I can really only recommend these games to true Darius diehards.

Darius Cozmic Collection Console is, like Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade; a great collection, no doubt. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with it as it is, since all games included are good and worth checking out - but the same issue of price is there. Different game versions aside, only four games are included this time, and if anyone already owns the arcade collection then only two of those are actually properly exclusive to it, since two are console ports of arcade games. This one is therefore, despite being just as good, even harder to recommend at its launching price. If the price ever goes down, or if it gets freely updated with the missing extra games, then that would be a different matter.

On the one hand, Darius Cozmic Collection Console deserves praise for giving us access to nine rare and classic shoot 'em ups. Nine titles that, for the most part, hold a high standard to this day. On the other hand, the collection deserves to be criticized since several of the included games are nothing more than regional repeats. The lack of settings and bonus content is also disappointing. The collection is still a must have for big fans of the genre, but if you just want an old-school shoot ‘em up there are better and cheaper options.

Darius Cozmic Collection Console is the other half of the Darius Arcade collection for the Nintendo Switch and it follows the same principle. Unfortunately it cannot make the same boasts, mostly because there's too many relevant games lacking from this collection and its heavier price tag means this effort represents less value for money than its arcade-based counterpart. This is not to say that the reproduction work in this release is not stunning because it certainly is, but what is being proposed here ends up feeling more like a shortcoming than a proper compilation of Darius console games.

Given the price and the fact that the compilation still isn’t completely comprehensive this is a hard sell for all but the most obsessive Darius fans and we’re really not sure how many of them there are in the world.