Twinbee - 1985 - Arcade & Nintendo Entertainment System (Japan only)
So...this is the original Twinbee from 1985. It's quite good actually, particularly the Arcade version which looks & sounds a lot better than the Nes port. As you'd expect, the gameplay provides much of the template for the later games. You scroll vertically up the screen, shooting at the swarms of vegetables that the CPU throws your way. You're slow and they're fast, so you won't hit every enemy in a group...but if you do, then you get a points bonus. Clouds drift past and spray out bells if you shoot them...collect the bells and you get points - BUT, if you fire at the bells they'll eventually change colour and give you a range of power-ups instead. Blue bells boost your speed, White gives you double shots, Green summons wingmen and Red gives you a shield. Unfairly, if you do manage to get the elusive red bell, the screen floods with eggs (or something) which try to crash into you and knock down your defences. In gameplay terms, the power-up structure works well - you have to earn your enhancements by attentively keeping the bells on screen until they change colour, all the while avoiding and destroying the actual enemies. You also have two types of attack - a straightforward shot for aerial opposition, and bombs that you can throw. While most of the time you'll just be shooting stuff out of the sky, you also have to check the ground and respond to threats accordingly. Your Twinbee dies if it collides with anything head on, but if it manages to take a hit in the side, then all it'll lose is an arm. Having less than two arms effects your ability to bomb though. Lose both arms and a medical thing will appear from the top of the screen and attempt to fix them back on. There's also a simultaneous 2-player mode which offers a lot more versatility. Twinbee and Winbee can link arms to combine firepower and shoot fireballs, or alternatively, one player can hover just above the second to create a fan shaped wave of shots. In short, there are a lot of little nuances which make the game distinct from other shooters out there.
The graphics are colourful and crisp, though they don't have the same anime feel of the later games. The landscapes you fly over are limited to basic types - forest, desert, mountain - and they start repeating (or at least looking very similar) after level 4, but they're nicely detailed with roads, lighthouses, etc. and lend variety to the levels. On a gameplay note, the background art is purely scenery...there's no danger of crashing into it, so you've got the full length of the screen to manoeuver around. There's not a lot of music, with the same tune playing throughout apart from when you encounter a boss or collect a power-up, but what there is sounds nice enough. Don't expect the quality of Detana Twinbee though, or you'll be disappointed. The enemies are your basic vegetable types really, turnips, peppers and runner beans although there are insects as well...I can't say why because I don't know the storyline. Somehow though, they feel entirely appropriate. At the end of each level there's a boss fight against a larger ship - unfortunately they all look the same apart from different colouring. There's nothing complex about the bosses really...just shoot them anywhere and for as long as possible until they explode - sometimes after a surprisingly short amount of time. They attack by summoning enemies after you, but they play fair and are satisfying to kill.
My main complaint about Twinbee is (as ever) the difficulty. The bells are extremely unforthcoming when it comes to powerups - you'll shoot them forever and they'll refuse to change, or the moment that a red bell appears it'll be hit by another bullet and disappear. This means that if you die on the later levels, it's often virtually impossible to regain a decent set of enhancements. Not to mention that your ship moves so slowly that it can be incredibly difficult to avoid enemies without the speed boost. Worse still, this is one of the 'special' Konami arcade titles which doesn't allow continues - once you die it's game over. It's not even worth trying to guess at the reasoning behind this, other than an apparent desire to prevent people from putting more money in the machine I suppose. This means I can't get past level 5, so if there is an end boss or anything worth meeting, I haven't seen it.
Still...every time I play Twinbee, I like it a little more. You can feel yourself getting better each time you start a new game. This is a solid Arcade shooter, worth playing for more than just its curio value.
