Sagaia for Game Boy

I found a litte collection of games today, and one of them was Trip World, so I am pretty happy with that. To celebrate, I played a game I've wanted to get to for a while.

Sagaia is a game in the Darius series.
The game boy version is not just a port but an original game.

After playing for a while I read on gamefaqs that if you fill your four squares of the particular powerup, you get a super-powerup that you will be able to keep even after a game over. That helped, thank you gamefaqs writer. Gamefaqs has given me so much, including most of the images I use.
A good thing about the game is unlimited continues and that bosses aren't too difficult. I would say the game is beatable for most people. There are no surprise-deaths, as in a game such as Salamander. You can also give yourself 9 lives to begin with, should you want to.
The music is quite good, though not really memorable. I do appreciate these futuristic experimental tunes, they are far out. Cool and not common in video games. I think it was mainly used in Mega Drive games, Mega Drive being the "cool" console...

A little demo of the music and gameplay (not my video)

The graphic has virtually no flicker or slow-down so can't complain there. I love to see all the bullets in the air and with no graphical hickups. It's like in Contra, bro.

The game is quite long for a game boy shmup, and I wish the levels were shorter. I also wish the bosses would die quicker. Maxing the powerups probably would accomplish that, but you need to stay alive long enough and shoot the right enemies.

The game plays well a shmup-fan will likely enjoy it, but I can't say it has anything spectacular to it. I give it 4/5.