Act-Fancer: Cybernetick Hyper Weapon closes out Data East's so-called "evolution trilogy," after Darwin 4078 and Super Real Darwin, but swaps those two games' vertical shooting for horizontal platform-and-shoot movement. The protagonist is a cyborg absorbing blue orbs dropped by fallen enemies: every five orbs it mutates into a new form with different weapons, up to seven possible evolutions.
It's a game with a dense, violent visual style, typical of late-80s Data East, appreciated today mostly as a design curiosity: few shooters of the era tied weapon progression so directly to a visual narrative of constant mutation.
If you liked this one
