What's that Shmup called ?

[Arbiter]

First off a big "Hi" as I'm a shmup Noob and this is my first post

I like games of all styles and formats and probably spend most of my time playing games of some sort or another.

I'm really hoping someone would be able to help me with the name of a coin op game I used to play a while ago. I'll give my best go at explaiing it, and help would be most appreciated as I just don't have a clue what it was called.

Appologies if my terminology isn't up to scratch .... here goes:

Its a futuristic shoot em up, which scrolls from top to bottom. You start with a small plane and their are many powerups to collect, each one making your ship more powerfull. If I remember correctly, the first couple of powerups enabled your ship to shoot sideways, left and right. After that you ship just got stronger, until the highest level where it shot what looked like black waves of energy in a forwards direction.

All very generic and could be ANY shooter I know ... but there was ONE single thing that stood out. One of the powerups, very rare and if I remember also random (i.e. you never acutally knew until you got what looked like an ordinary powerup), turned your ship into a massive black BAT. And the bullets that came from your ship were also big black bats ....

At the end of each level were big silver boss ships .....

And that is all I can remember .... Hopefully someone remembers turning into a big bat while flying a futuristic space ship around ....lol ......

If not, Hope you are all well .... Forget about the Footy and play some more games

cheers

Mike

[system11]

Sound vaguely like something you might find in Darwin 4078 or SRD Super Real Darwin. Check klov.com for those.

[Arbiter]

Sound vaguely like something you might find in Darwin 4078 or SRD Super Real Darwin. Check klov.com for those.

Absolutely brilliant .... it turns out it was Darwin 4078 !!!

Looks way dated from what I remember ... lol !!!!!

Thanks

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Now that mystery shmup turned out to be none other than Data East's 1987 shooter of "Darwin 4078" which is an arcade Jamma PCB -- is a two-layered PCB. Someone on the old Shmups.com forum said that it was "extemely rare" to buy a Darwin 4078 PCB with original factory produced Darwin arcade instruction card + story card. I do have a Darwin 4078 PCB with said original arcade paperworks. Which leads me to believe that it was made to be inserted into those funky old-school Japanese cocktail-styled cabinets since both the Darwin 4078 instruction card & story card are presented in a big & wide format -- is easy on the eyes, of course. ^_~

Try playing a real Darwin 4078 arcade PCB and one will notice that the sound effects are really bad. (It seems that Capcom's 1986 arcade shmup of "Hyper Dyne Sidearms" sounds a millions times better than the sound output of Darwin 4078 which came out a year later in 1987 -- WTF?)

BTW, both sound output of Sidearms PCB & Darwin 4078 PCB are "mono" only, yet Sidearms sounds much better than Darwin 4078...why is that? (Could it be Data East used some crappy sound EPROMs for sound & music?)

There's a minor gripe about playing Darwin 4078, is that one can't continue where one left off -- it's truly "game over" if you lose your last ship. So the incentive is to try to get as high a score + the crazy stages that feature such abstract enemies just boggles the mind...what was Data East thinking when they decided to make this Darwin 4078 arcade game? They sure succeeded in making such an abstract arcade shmup indeed. ^_~

The really odd thing about Darwin 4078 is that it's all presented entirely in English yet it did not get an official USA arcade distribution (despite that Data East had an USA arcade distribution center in San Jose, CA but didn't import Darwin 4078 to American arcades...they could've easily done so). And so, Data East's Darwin 4078 arcade PCB remains as a Japan-only released arcade game to this day. Even the Darwin PCB instruction manual was printed in both English & Japanese (which I have as well). I suppose Data East was planning to release Darwin 4078 for distribution in the USA but decided at the last minute to cancel that plan. All the indications of having a dual language Darwin 4078 instruction manual seems to point in that direction. Hmmm..... ^_~

The shmup world will never know what Data East's true intentions of distributing this abstract arcade shmup (possibly for the USA arcade market) that is known as Darwin 4078.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[ccovell]

Man, that's 17 "Darwin 4078"'s in one post!

Pronouns for Great Variety!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Man, that's 17 "Darwin 4078"'s in one post!

Pronouns for Great Variety!

For ccovell,

I wanted to make sure that the reader is informed that I was refering to the 1st Darwin PCB & not the 2nd produced Darwin PCB, hence the many times it appears in the above post. I didn't want our fellow shmuppers & guests to get confused as to which Darwin arcade PCB I was talking about.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[zaphod]

Okay here's the skinny.

There's an Evolutioon" theme in this shooter, and it's hoe the powerusp work.

COllecting a powerup lets you evolve. Survive long enough witohut a powerup and you devolve, sometimes into the previous form, sometimes into another one.

To become the black bat, you must get to Kues and then allow a powerdown from timeout. then collect powerups util you become "Deam" If you get HIT while you are Deam, you then become BLack Deam (the suepr powerful bat. HOwever, you can then no longer collect a powerup, adn when it times out you go back to somethning much worse. (i'll have to pay again to figrure it out.)

It is also possible to Mutate into a wieird eye thing that shoots randomly but cannot be destroyed by by shots , only by collison.

[Arbiter]

Thanks for all the extra info .... brilliant site !!!!

I found the story about the original game interesting, and not sure about the release information because I played it in South Africa where I grew up. Having no "continue" option did make the gamea bit frustrating. I could make it to about the 6th or 7th Boss on 1 credit but it wasn't around long enough for me to finish it.

As for the Bat info that's great that you've worked it out ... I never could and just assumed it was random. As for teh eye ball thingy mutation, you can do that by hovering over the weird ships that float up from below the screen, but don't appear to do anything. Every now and again they let out a small explosion, and if you hoever into that you get the eye ball ship which really sucked because you couldn't aim where you were shooting !!!!!

Thanks