SRD: Super Real Darwin (1987)

cough cough cough oh heavens! what have i gotten myself into Doh! I dug up Darwin 4081 up after seeing it on hardcoregaming101, but recalll seeing it before as well. I picked it up filtering my Shmups,shooters by date and went for something old. Darwin is appropriately the fittest! Darwin isn't a bad game, and this is a rather good article that outlines some of it's achievements (for historical purposes) however it's not really anything to write home about. I dont particularly like many aesthetics or conventions of the Genesis to begin with. the sound is tinny and metalic, video effects are lackluster, sprites are plain, theres not embellishment of pixel art. controls are fair but the game is hard. in the end this game is just painfully average Supposedly it's best on genesis (according to my wizard notes) It's fairly short if you survive and takes about 40 minutes tops over almost 10 stages. The good parts are the idea. the box art also would easily sell the game nicely to me back in it's day. Also bonus points for a japanese release that is 100% in english! I also don't doubt its best on genesis as it feels, looks and sounds very much like a very old arcade.... But this too has aged. weird biotechnological amalgation seems almost like a requirement in shmups. In this genre it would seem you die, get bombs, pick up stuff, and there's probably some biomonster augmented with technology lurking a little bit further to the right.

This game isn't alien crush with it's theme, and it's not R-type as a game (not even against master system!). being so early there's just been too much since that this one is difficult to appreciate. The variety is good but bits of the mechanics curtail the potential. finally the game is quite hard. I wouldnt even try it withotu cheats, which are quite hard to find (and seem to exist only in an old forum post) , so i'll just post them here for sake of history or whatever forsaken soul picks this up and journeys on: