Darwin 4081

Darwin 4078 is based 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 process of evolution is incorporated into the 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 in order to maintain their existence in the world.

All of 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 over 10 types of transformations throughout the game, each with offensive and defensive maneuvers specific to their design. The sound effects used are minimal, but different types 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.

The player must progress through 16 different levels, defeating the boss at the end of each level. The player controls their ship using an 8-way joystick and 2 buttons (one button targets enemies in the air, and the other targets the enemies on the ground). 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 in the forward direction at a constant speed, but the second type shoots bullets that travel at different speeds depending on its distance with the player's ship (the bullets travel quicker if the player is farther away, and slower if the player is close by). This made it so that staying away from enemies would not necessarily make it easier to avoid attacks. The game's difficulty also does not change overtime, and enemies do not become stronger as the player's ship evolves. This style was continued in the game's 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.

Darwin 4078 was ported to the 2nd generation MSX in 1987 by Hudson Soft, and bore similar appearance to the arcade game Battle Wings and the NES game Hector '87. A sequel titled Super Real Darwin (スーパー・リアル・ダーウィン sūpā riaru dāwin) (also written as S.R.D.) was released by Data East in 1987, and was ported by Sega on April 8, 1990 for the Sega Mega Drive as Darwin 4081. Act-Fancer: Cybernetick Hyper Weapon (アクトフェンサー akuto fensā) is not a direct sequel to the game, but bears similarities to Darwin as a side-scrolling action game developed by Data East that uses an evolution system. Darwin 4081 was numbered 4081 because it was the 4th game that used the evolution system after Darwin (4078), S.R.D. (4079), and Act-Fancer (4080). Other similar games include Bio-ship Paladin by UPL and Bermuda Triangle by SNK, which also feature ships that change appearance with power-ups.