A compact, snappy Darius for Nintendo's machine, faithful in spirit but limited by a single screen. Fun for short runs.
Your verdict
Category
Shooter1 player7+
Description
Compile vertical shoot-'em-up in which a spacecraft battles alien armies in space. Published by Seika, released in the USA in 1993. Top-down view with varied power-ups to chain, massive bosses and multidirectional shooting. American version of Compile's Super Aleste under the title Super Nova.
Super Nova review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
1/5
Story
★★★★★
"Anecdotal"
Taito keeps its founding idea: enemy ships modelled on fish, manta ray, coelacanth, mechanical whale, whose scale dwarfs the Silver Hawk. The zones branch and each is given a dominant hue, abyssal blue, rust, gold, so no two runs through the game ever look quite alike.
Zuntata, Taito's in house team, applies its signature here: deep bass, aquatic textures, drifting melodies that pull the shooter towards reverie rather than adrenaline. The boss themes break that balance brutally, and the contrast between long pads and those dry attacks gives the series its whole sonic personality.
A 1994 US SNES Taito release of Darius Force, the localised version of the Taito horizontal shooter under the 'Super Nova' name that erases the Darius branding for the US market. The US cart is rarer than the Japanese Super Famicom version, and boxed CIB in an intact box with manual is valued by US Taito SNES collectors. The cote climbs hard, sustained by physical scarcity and by the cult aura of the Darius line despite the rebrand.
Is Super Nova still worth playing in 2026?
Darius Force, also released as Super Nova in the West, is a compact Darius tailored for the SNES, namely a single screen instead of the arcade triptych. The branching stage tree remains in place and the handling rediscovers the reading of energy cones and titanic fish dear to the series. The tech is honest without rivaling the original cabinet. For Darius fans wanting a ready to play 16 bit cartridge, a good second tier pick, more modest but sincere and faithful in spirit.
