Retronexus: Sagaia

Since this is the debut of my Sweet-ass retro column, the Retronexus, let me give you a run-down of what happens on here.
As you might have assumed, I’ll be talking to you about those badass things we call old-school games. Mostly Sega Genesis games (Mega Drive games for you non-North American folk) for the first little while and there’s a reason for that.
I was always a Nintendo kid in my youth. I first had a NES that was thrown out (Something I wish my 5-year old self didn’t do) then moved on to the much-beloved Super Nintendo and its generally mediocre successor, the Nintendo 64. The Sega Consoles were a forbidden fruit for me, the only opportunity I had to play them was when I visited my uncle, 6 hours away in Ottawa, Canada’s Half-assed excuse for a capitol city. Anyways, let’s get this ball rolling.

Remember When Boxart looked like this?

My uncle had a vast collection of Sega Genesis titles and one that gave me particularly fond memories was Sagaia. Though I had completely forgotten the title of the game, I managed to re-discover it after months of googling terms like “SHMUP with Robot fishes.” Sagaia was my introduction to SHMUPs and I love it for that reason, it also happens to be particularly challenging, for me anyhow.





Here’s a little bit of History on Sagaia:
Sagaia is also known as “Darius II,” the second title in Taito’s Darius series which was released in Japanese arcades in 1989. A year later in 1990, it was ported to the Genesis/Mega Drive and finally appeared outside of Japan, taking on the mantel of Sagaia. One thing that helped the Darius series stand out during what I refer to as “The Golden Age of SHMUP” was the ability to choose a route through the game. Every time you complete a stage you’re able to choose which zone to play through next until you finally complete one of the routes. This help give the series some replayability. Another thing that set Darius apart was the bosses. Instead of generic looking spaceships, Taito decided to do something different and modelled all the bosses after various aquatic life. Finally, Darius II was ported onto the Turbografx-CD as “Super Darius II” in 1993 and again ported onto the Sega Saturn in 1996. The later ports were visually enhanced and sported a new boss, both were released exclusively in Japan.
Now, let’s play this bitch.

That's a lot of stages!

Each stage in Sagaia takes place in our solar system. Zone A starts on the sun, somehow your one-man ship is able to travel in extreme temperatures, but no matter! You’re on the sun, fending off waves of enemies! Eventually you’ll reach a warning sign where the background proceeds to go hazy and a giant fish-shaped craft approaches.





There are two methods of destroying the giant robot Lionfish. Shoot at its mouth while it’s attacking, or shoot the bomb floating beneath it, either way it’s easy. But it’s not over yet! Another one attacks from behind!





After you avoid being taken from behind by a robo-fish, you have the choice to move onto zone B or Zone C. You’re also given two choices when you complete subsequent levels until the game is completed and you relish in your victory as the credits roll. Something that I’ve never been able to accomplish. Actually, I’ve never been able to get past any of the second zones until just recently... I blame the Seahorse Sub-boss that appears in both stages.

Damn you Seahorse!

Compared to other Horizontally-scrolling shooters, Sagaia is a little lacking in the power-ups department, you have three weapons. Your regular horizontal shot, which you can upgrade, you can get a powerup that allows you to shoot vertically at the same time which is also upgradable, and pressing the B button allows you to shoot a series of bombs that can strike enemies on the ground.
Aside from the bosses and sub-bosses, they enemies aren’t very exciting, just your generic space-enemy fare, same with the environments, aside from the intro-level on the Sun, they’re rather bland.

This is about as exciting as it gets!

The same can be said about the music, it’s fitting, but it’s just there to serve as a backdrop and fails to immerse you into the game, much the music in Gradius and similar titles.
But on a positive note, Sagaia has some pretty stellar gameplay. The controls are responsive and the difficulty is perfect, it puts up quite the challenge without being impossible to complete.
Overall, aside from the map system, Sagaia doesn’t really differentiate itself from other games in the genre, but it’s a solid title. It’s got tight gameplay, it’s challenging and the bosses are really cool, if you haven’t already, check it out.