Darius Gaiden is a two-dimensional shoot'em up. The player controls a space ship named the Silver Hawk and must guide it through scrolling stages, destroying enemies and avoiding obstacles along the way. The ship is armed with forward-firing missiles, aerial bombs and a protective force-field, all of which can be upgraded by various power-ups that are dropped by specially-colored enemies when they are destroyed by the player. New to the Silver Hawk's arsenal in Darius Gaiden is the 'black hole bomb.' When fired, the black hole bomb will create a large vortex in the center of the screen, which sucks in enemies and projectiles on the screen for a short moment, until it explodes into a powerful ball of lightning that inflicts massive damage onto every enemy on the screen.
