ABOUT

A 63-page A4 photo book of Darius, published in August 1987 by Big Apple as a special issue in its Perfect strategy series, within months of Taito's triple-screen arcade machine reaching game centres. The National Diet Library holds it as a bound volume.

Rather than a conventional guide, it is a photographic record: the three-monitor cabinet itself and the game's artwork are its subjects. For a game whose physical presence, panoramic screen, body sonic seat and all, was the point, photography was an apt medium.

No other shooter of the era received a photo book of its cabinet, which leaves this as a unique document of Darius as an object rather than a program.

GAMES IN THIS BOOK

Darius 1987 Taito

DETAILS

WHERE TO GET IT

Searched by ISBN, so a shop that has this exact edition will show it and one that does not will come back empty. Most of these were printed in Japan and never distributed elsewhere.