Maker - Sega   Catalogue No. - G-4033

Type - Vertical Shooting

Originally by Data East, this Mega Drive version come to us from Sega.  They've actually done quite a nice conversion here with smooth scrolling areas, nicely animated craft and pretty good soundtrack.  Graphics are not really up there with the best however neither were the arcade original's graphics.

The powering up system used in Darwin 4081 certainly is odd.  Your ship evolves rather than powering up.  There are a number of items that you can collect throughout the areas such as Evolution up, B-Evolution up (More powerful), Speed up, Armor and DNA.  All of these add to each other in order to build your craft up in to any of it's 12 forms !  It's all very confusing at first but not to worry because things soon fall in to place.

Darwin 4081 is one of those games I always passed on when I was younger so I'm glad that I gave it a chance all these years later.  Quite an interesting and challenging shooter.