I’m pretty sure, by this point, we are all well aware as to what a shoot-’em-up is. You fly around as a thing, you shoot a bunch of other things, those things give you things to shoot more things, it’s that simple, but effective. Of course though, there would be spins and twist on this genre made throughout the years, such as the “cute-’em-up” subgenre. These are basically the exact same as regular shoot-’em-ups, except rather than being themed in space or even cute, they feature extremely strange elements and locations that you probably wouldn’t find anywhere else, sometimes also going in a very… specific direction. Ignoring that type of cute-’em-up for now, one of the earliest examples of this type of shooter would come in 1986, in the form of the original TwinBee.

So, if I were to describe this game, I would say it is basically Xevious, except pretty weird, and much more memorable, in my opinion. I thought that this game was pretty good, even if it does nothing new for the shoot-’em-up genre except for making everything weird. Then again, weird doesn’t always mean bad, and keeping things simple in terms of gameplay is never bad either.

The graphics and art style are very simple, but never too boring with how many different things you see throughout the game, the music is pretty good, with that chime that plays when you get a power-up being stuck in my head for the past day, the control is very responsive and versatile, being able to move in 8 directions all over the screen, which was rare for shooters back in the day, and the gameplay is pretty simple, yet just sweet enough to not feel too generic.

The gameplay, at its core, is just your average space shooter, where you move around the screen, shoot enemies, get powerups, and bomb objects on the ground just like how you would in Xevious. It is all what you would expect, but what makes it differ from others is a lot of the enemies and items you can find were not typical for this genre until then. Many of the different enemies are very bizarre, with them appearing as fruits, utensils and dishes, office supplies, lightbulbs, and Japanese stuff. In addition, the powerups you get are bells that you shoot out of the clouds. All of this is very tame compared to other cute-’em-ups that would come out later, but again, for the time, it was different enough to seem interesting.

In terms of the core gameplay though, it does actually get pretty fun, fast, and hectic as you keep going and get more powerups. As you shoot the bells, they change color, and depending on the color, you will get a new powerup, such as more speed, a double shot, a shield, and image copies of the ship. Again, none of this is too new for the genre, but whenever you get enough speed and weapon upgrades, you move CRAZY FAST, and it honestly makes things a lot more fun. It helps a lot with the bigger abundance of enemies in later stages, and it feels extremely satisfying to conquer these stages.

Now, with all that being said, if you aren’t won in by the enemies, powerups, or weird style, then really, there is nothing for you here. It rides completely on the bizarre nature of those elements to try to win over players, which isn’t too much of a bad thing, but again, if that doesn’t appeal to you, then it is yet again just another vertical shoot-’em-up in a long list of vertical shoot-’em-ups.

Overall, while it doesn’t do too much to change up the gameplay from other shooters, it was still overall pretty fun, and definitely a nice change of pace from a bunch of other space-themed shooters, with something more weird and different to mix things up. Let’s just hope that the sequels that follow do a little more to spice things up in the gameplay department.

Game #193

One of the earliest shmups ever made, Twinbee on Famicom is short but sweet. A delightfully colored and vibrant game that's fairly challenging, but light enough on the enemy waves that it isn't daunting to people that would potentially want to start getting into this subgenre.

Like a lot of Konami classics, the music and sound effects are excellent, helping accentuate this epic space battle against enemies that look oddly close to houseware, as if the designers looked around their kitchen and decided this is the rogue gallery for their new arcade style space shooter. The early game development days were just magical.

Also, did anyone else first experience Twinbee in the form of a Newgrounds flash game where the titular ship just walked around normally and shot at bystanders with a real gun? No, just me? Cool.

Maybe I'm not in the majority here, but this game wasn't for me at all.

First of all, this is another space shooter game. This game however have his own little twist : the bells system. When killing an enemy or shooting at a cloud, a bell will appear. If you collect them, you earn points. You can shoot those bells so that they change colors. Depending on the color, it can give you a new power up when collected. These power-ups are really crucial if you want to go far in the game. When shooting the bells, thay can go off screen, making it harder to know where they are. If you shoot one shot too many, the bell will change color and it will become a normal points bell. The big issue here is that while trying to juggle your bells to get power ups, you need to deal with a whole bunch of enemies, which make it even more difficult.

Managing those bells with enemies is extremely difficult. You can also say F*** those bells and just shoot the enemies, but thay can be in the way, blocking projectiles that were meant for enemies.

Even though the bell idea is unique, it was a frustrating experience for me. If you want a challenge and count at the same time, this game is for you.

Game #20 of my challenge

Of all the very early shooting games I've played, TwinBee is probably my favorite. It's almost a straight upgrade of Xevious but it adds its own bells and whistles. I especially like the bells—these are your upgrade icons, and drop from clouds you fire through them. The really fun part about them is that they change color when you shoot them, and each color is a different type of upgrade; they also bounce up the screen when you fire at them, so you can find yourself juggling them for the right upgrade, and it's just really fun to keep them up in the air while managing the enemies on screen.

The upgrades themselves are pretty limited, but I like the option style, which has a ghost of your character follow behind you and shoot right behind you, which encourages you to move your character around a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing how the series evolves.

Angel_Arle Twinbee reviews
Bonus: Twinbee for Famicom
Part 2: Moero TwinBee: Cinnamon Hakase o Sukue! for FDS
Part 3: TwinBee 3: Poko Poko Daimaō for Famicom
Part 4: TwinBee Da!! for GB

It’s the start of another series of reviews (along with a couple of others you’ll see this month). Here’s the Twinbee series, an iconic series by Konami but was mostly only known in Japan due to most of the games never getting a US release. Known for its cutesy art style and plenty of memorable characters in the later entries. Twinbee is one of those shmup series I wish got more recognition over here and while it’s gotten more over the years, I thought to play most of the games in the series to give it some love. So it’s about time I start and talk about the first game made for Arcades!

Twinbee doesn’t really have much of a plot here, not even an intro so I’m just going to have to follow the most trustworthy site ever made, the Twinbee Wiki! Hmm so this game has a villain named King Spice as he travels through a vast array of space, he finds a place called Donburi Island and invades it. The land was then divided into 5 and were shared by his generals to make sure no one could defeat them. Unbeknownst to the King, a Doctor by the name of Doctor Cinnamon was building two airship fighters named Twinbee and Winbee. They would be piloted by his two sons, Annamon and Donnamon as it’s up to them to save the Island. Now despite what I just said, this seems to have never been what the plot was in the first place. In fact those pilots I named off weren’t even mentioned to have existed until a radio drama called Twinbee Paradise. Back then it was basically two ships named Twinbee and Winbee so I will just be using those names for now.

So, have you ever played Xevious? It was a popular Arcade game by Namco. Many games at the time tried to be like it and to no surprise Twinbee does borrow ideas from it. It’s a vertical shmup as you go through 5 stages (though technically 10). You can shoot with one button and throw bombs down to the ground below you with the other. You want to shoot the enemies flying around while bombing enemies at the ground. Bombing them also can give out bonus points from apples and peaches. They can also drop a star that destroys any enemy on screen. There’s also a bell item that can give you a multi shot but god I could not find this thing ever in my playthrough. I even tried looking at longplays and I saw one get it after a full loop of the game. Apparently if you get another you’re supposed to get a baseball but I surely won’t ever get it which is a shame. If there’s an easier way to get it then I don’t know how.

What makes Twinbee popular outside of its presentation is the co-op! You see, I mentioned two airship fighters and they don’t take turns playing. Co-op is what you want to do if you have the chance to do so as you not only fight on each level together to defeat enemies and bosses but you even have an exclusive attack. Join together by touching each other's ships to perform powerful attacks that Twinbee/Winbee could never do alone! Just be careful as this can make you an easy target so try to keep in mind your safety as staying alive is more important. Though don’t feel too sad if you can’t play with a friend as being alone won’t make the game not fun for you. Please keep in mind that despite the different appearances, Twinbee and Winbee play identical so no fighting over who gets who you got that?

Well with a fun shmup, obviously you’ll need some power ups right? Well Twinbee has you covered, albeit in a very controversial mechanic. Here we have bells! Hit a cloud and a bell could pop out that is yellow. Collecting it will get you points which may not seem anything special outside of getting you bonus lives for getting enough points. Try hitting the bell and it’ll bounce up and eventually it’ll change color. Collect it and you’ll get a power up! The blue bell gives you a speed boost and goes up to 5 different levels of speed. Try not to collect too many as you’ll lose control like crazy if you grab too many. The white bell will upgrade your shot to a twin cannon giving you more firepower. The green bell will add shadow versions of Twinbee/Winbee that will let you throw even more bombs and shots at a time. They also drag a little behind you though they’ll stay in the same place you are if you stand still. The red bell gives you a barrier that protects you from many hits and is good if you aren’t too good at dodging yet but it is the hardest one to obtain. Keep in mind you can’t grab a green bell and then a red bell probably for balance reasons. If you’re skilled though, try to spawn a red and green bell and collect them both before they go off screen and you get the benefit of both. I’m not sure if it was ever intentional though.

So just because the stages are colorful and nice and even enemies with a food theme, the game won’t let you win so easily. Twinbee/Winbee can only take one hit before death like many shmups. You can take two hits but it comes at a cost, you’ll lose your arms meaning you lose the ability to bomb. Even losing one arm can be bad as it worsens your rate of fire for bombs. Don’t fret though because if you lose both, the ambulance will come in to repair your arms but just don’t hope for more medical insurance because it’ll come once per life. This game also suffers from what many other shmups have where if you die late in the game, you might as well just give up because it’s very hard to recover. You start off very slow and have very poor shots and considering how powerups work, you will not get them fast enough.

In fact let’s just get this over with, this game is hard as hell. I think I’d have an easier time playing Gradius, that’s how hard this feels to me. Enemies and bullets get insane by the 2nd half of the game. Which is crazy considering none of the bosses are even close to being challenging. You don’t even have continues though with how it feels impossible to recover anyway, it’s probably for the better. You’d think they would be hard considering the little wait with the music or siren playing before the boss shows up but they go down very quickly making me wonder how any of them got anywhere in life. Though to be fair, they do feel almost impossible if you don’t have power ups but that’s like everything in this game. Even King Spice himself isn’t too hard.

So once you beat him you think the game is over but you do technically have another 5 stages that are similar but focus on a different set of enemies and are very challenging. The bosses however will stay the same. Personally, by this point it does get a bit tiring for me despite Twinbee’s low playtime. In fact I think Twinbee, while a good game in many ways even from a historical standpoint, just isn’t all that fun for me. It’s a weird feeling as I like it, I think it has good ideas but maybe it’s just because of later games in the series but I just can’t see myself ever wanting to go back to this one. Even the aesthetic of it, while pretty for 1985, can be a bit samey feeling at times and there isn’t much music to enjoy either but what it is here is pretty nice. It’s hard to explain but I really like how the music sounds in this, I’m not sure what Konami was using but I like it a lot! There’s even some voice but not very much of it.

Twinbee is a good start to a series that would do so much more after this title, while my score might be a bit harsh, it’s impressive something like this still is fun and packs charm. It’s a shame Twinbee never made it to the states because I could have seen it being successful but maybe America was too boring for fun colorful shmups. Though it should be noted it would eventually see a port on the DS in a collection called Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits by M2. Oddly though it’s called Rainbow Bell in that collection which confuses me. Why even bother with a name change? Though nowadays you can play it on Switch and PS4 and as for most Arcade Archives releases, it’s perfect for anyone wanting to play Twinbee. If you want to see how the series started off then give the first game a try, you might like it!

What sets Twinbee apart from other shooters of its time for me is its constant sense of interaction. The fact that it asks you to juggle three different tasks - shoot enemies, take down land-based turrets, and shoot bells an exact amount of times before collecting them to get power-ups - creates a juggling act that requires the player's focus to be on far more areas of the screen than just their ship. By having this level of multitasking, it also encourages two-player cooperation, which I was only able to experience in a limited burst, but is truly well balanced through this system. It's a well coordinated and considered experience in spite of just looking like "what if we made Xevious cute and quirky~?" And THEN it decides to load you up to ludicrous levels with power-ups, with the speed boost being one of the most generous of the era with how much you can stack it, sometimes to nearly out of control levels! For being an insanely simple game, Twinbee offers a lot of expression and flexibility in playstyle and prioritization!

Why is Stage 5 so long? It's like twice as long as any other stage with the most turrets and enemy patterns that often linger and bounce about the screen in ways that leave VERY small safe zones... that can then be filled by bullets. And it's here where Twinbee's weakness shows: its spawning system. Rather than having you restart the level when you blow up, Twinbee has you immediately spawn right where you are, getting right back into the action. While this sounds good, and in fact IS good in the case of multiplayer where your partner can pick up your slack while you try to power up, Twinbee is so weak in its starting form that you're likely to get hit again... and again. Where other shooters would force you to restart the level, which may seem like a harsher punishment, it also encourages learning the level better, trying to do something different, and putting your weakened ship in a consistent position to upgrade and improve. Twinbee decides to throw a baby in the middle of a battlefield with no briefing and go "welp, good luck!" In this case, dying in an area like Stage 5 once might as well be a Game Over unless you're right at the end, as the odds of losing ALL of your lives one after the other when depowered is an incredibly likely and emotionally debilitating experience.

I look forward to seeing what the rest of the series has to offer. The initial impression is incredibly promising, I like the mechanics in general, and I think it's a lot more well considered than a lot of titles of its era. But man was I humbled quite a few times at the end of runs!

Played on Nintendo Switch.

This is a decently made shmup from the 80's but is a bit boring in my opinion. It takes a while to really get into meat of the game with it being incredibly easy to begin with and only really having any challenge from the 3rd unique level onwards.

The multiplayer on this game weirdly enough makes it more boring as it becomes significantly easier. Despite this, I think it's a decently made game that is just a product of its time as well as not being personally my genre of game that I enjoy.