Co-designed by David Braben – along with his team at Frontier Developments – DarXide is a more frivolous space shooter, compared to what he usually puts out. It was first published, exclusively for the 32X in Europe, by Sega in 1996.

DarXide is a relatively straightforward blast through ten levels of space action. There’s no ‘open world’. There’s no trading or docking.

You control a spaceship viewed in the third-person, shooting at anything hostile you can get inside your crosshairs.

The story is that you’re on a rescue mission, to destroy an invading alien force that has taken over Earth’s asteroid mining operation, and to rescue any of the miners being held hostage by the aliens. And – of course – blast the shit out of those pesky invaders too…

DarXide looks very dated by today’s standards, but don’t let that put you off. Gameplay-wise, it’s been very well-polished.

If you’re looking for an obscure, no-nonsense space shooter then you might enjoy DarXide.

More: Darxide on Wikipedia