Premise:  Earth's command fleet has been destroyed, and the massive alien attack forces revel in their victory.  Only DarXide, a tiny star system, lies between the invasion fleet and earth.  This time, it's personal.  It's payback time .... (Frontier ad copy)

Comments:  It's kinda hard to judge a game based on four rather grainy screenshots, so I'm not even going to try.  David Braben himself has described it to me as "3D Asteroids," which seems apt enough.  Apparently the aliens were bombarding DarXide with asteroids, so you get to zip through the rock storm while looking for their ships.  The Frontier Developments web site adds that it was chosen as Best 32X Game of the Year, and was one of the few 32X games to employ texture mapping (DOOM and Metal Head are two other examples).  I know that doesn't help a lot, but that's all I can provide for now.  I'll know more once an owner of one of those rare original carts speaks up. 

Rating:  N/A

Variants:  This was often mistakenly referred to as a 32X port of Elite in several early collector's lists of unreleased American titles.  David Braben has personally assured me that there is no official port of Elite for any Sega platform to date. The name was originally Dark Side, but was changed in order to avoid confusion with the H.R. Geiger inspired videogame Dark Seed.

Sidebars:  This was originally developed as a European launch title for the aborted Sega Neptune, the combined Genesis/32X console that never got beyond the prototype stage.  It was also the very last European release and the penultimate release for all markets.