Darwin 4078
Darwin 4078 is an arcade game released by Data East in 1986. The game is a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up like Xevious, but as the title indicates, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is incorporated into the gameplay.
Setting and design
The game takes place within a gigantic spaceship which has virtually infinite capacity because of its ability to manipulate time and space. The player must deal with enigmatic creatures called EVOL, which consist only of pure energy and need to keep themselves in capsules to maintain their existence in the world.All the characters in the game are designed to resemble microscopic organisms, both in their appearance and their quick, tricky movements. The player's ship undergoes more than ten types of transformations throughout the game, each with offensive and defensive maneuvers specific to their design. The sound effects used are minimal, but different kinds of sounds are used according to the type of shots or their speed. A sound resembling a long scream results when the player's ship is hit and returns to its weakest evolutionary state.
The game's designer, graphic designer, and music composer, Tomo Furukawa, would go on to become the vocalist of the band Guniw Tools.
Gameplay
The player must progress through 16 different levels, defeating the boss at the end of each of them. The player controls their ship using an 8-way joystick and 2 buttons. The power of the player's ship increases as it evolves.There are two broad categories that define how enemies attack. The first type only shoots forward at a constant speed, but the second type shoots bullets that travel at different speeds depending on its distance with the player's ship. This meant that staying away from enemies would not necessarily make it easier to avoid attacks. The difficulty also does not change over time, and enemies do not become stronger as the player's ship evolves. This style was continued in the sequel.
Once the player reaches 2,000,000 points, they gain a bonus of 2,000,000 points, and a bonus of 3,000,000 points once they reach 3,000,000 points. This bonus system allows the player to reach 10,000,000 points after gaining only 5,000,000 points, but the game's counter does not display digits in the ten millions. Destroying 16 ground enemies in a row in the desert level extends gameplay without having to insert additional credits.
Evolution system
The game's most unique characteristic is the evolution of the player's ship. It starts out in a form called BEAS, and evolves when the player collects EVOL capsules, which appear when certain enemies are killed. The ship grows in size and strength as it evolves, but certain forms may be difficult to use effectively, so the player must pace the evolution properly in order to succeed. There are 19 different evolutionary forms in total.The ship's attacks that target airborne enemies gradually increase in strength as the ship evolves, but the attacks against enemies on the ground cannot be improved in the same way. Hitting the airborne Nyoiarei and Zanzō enemies with a certain number of shots causes them to get knocked out, and the player's ship can dock into these enemies for a short period of time while they are unconscious. The ship's attacks against enemies on the ground increase in strength during this period, but some ground enemies cannot be killed during this power-up. No further power-ups exist for attacks against enemies on the ground. The giant version of Zanzō cannot be knocked out, so the player is unable to use it to improve their ground attack.
Devolution
Players must collect EVOL capsules frequently in order to advance to the strongest evolutionary forms. Failing to collect a capsules during a certain period of time causes the ship to gradually "devolve" one level at a time, but the devolution timer is stopped while the ship is docked with an enemy character as explained above.The player's ship devolves into the weakest form, PISTER, if it is hit by an enemy attack. The further up the ship is on the evolutionary chain when it gets hit, the longer the animation is for the ship to devolve. Though coming into contact with any of the enemies normally results in an instant loss, the ship is invincible while the devolution animation lasts, and the player may kill enemies by ramming into them. The player loses their ship only if they are hit by an enemy attack while they are in the weakest evolutionary form, or if they crash into an enemy while the ship is not devolving.