Angel_Arle Twinbee reviews
Part 1: TwinBee for Arcade
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
(Note this was originally from the Twinbee Arcade review when the two versions were not separate)
Just for fun, let’s talk about the Famicom version of Twinbee. This port would come out January 4th 1986. In fact it was the first game that year for the system. Konami wasn’t there yet with their iconic early games but Twinbee is still a fairly good effort. The port looks good for the time, the framerate is solid, music sounds nice and the scrolling is fantastic too! They even kept the 2 player mode with minimal technical problems and even kept what made co-op fun! There are some changes here and there like the green bell becoming a flashing red one. They also made it so if you hit the bell too much, it becomes an enemy so don’t collect him! He can give points but he’s not optimal for a high score run. It’s also a lot easier to get the multi shot in this one as now you can find it as candy and it’s even in the first level. If you want a different multi shot, try holding select before picking it up, it’ll change where the shots go. There’s also a bottle of milk and I think these give you an extra life? It makes the same noise as getting one via points so maybe it is that.
There are some interesting changes with this port. For one thing, the game is pretty easy until you get to the final stage which makes it a lot friendlier for less experienced shmup players. I still do wish stage 5 was better balanced though like if you don’t have a barrier by that point, pray. There’s also two different cheats to give you more lives but they don’t really help much when being underpowered hurts you so badly by the end. In case you still want 10 lives though, hold upright and A and then press start. It’ll still say 3 lives before the game begins but trust me, you have 10. You now lose both of your arms when getting hit once meaning it’s very easy to lose your ability to bomb in this version. You also now can only throw one bomb no matter what and I swear the aiming for it is worse, not even getting the blinking red bell can help as the shadows don’t throw bombs. There’s also still no ending or credits since it loops but that’s fine and to be expected for this kind of game. But the worst change of all that can’t be accepted, they changed the peaches to cherries, HOW DARE THEY!
This version of the game would be ported to the GBA via the Famicom Mini series. It’s about the same quality of any other release in that series but I did notice it lacks two players. Maybe the link cable supports it? The game would get the usual Virtual Console support outside of the 3DS for reasons I’ll go over another time. It would also land on NSO by the third update along with Mighty Bomb Jack and Metroid. What’s cool is that they even brought it over here making it the first time US players can try it besides again that 3DS thing but again LATER! It would also later get an SP version that lets you play on the 2nd loop immediately. Though I do wonder why it’s just the first game still on NSO but whatever I’ll never understand Konami. In the end it’s a good port but it’s still not the best game in the world. This probably made a great game back then if you had a friend too. Certainly one of the better games to come out compared to stuff like idk, Ikari. Could you imagine if Micronics made this port? Good thing Konami wasn’t stupid!
Oh and to wrap things up, I just wanna say I’m thankful it was on NSO because when I first tried to play this on an emulator, the graphics in stage 4 and 5 glitched up and started using the Twinbee logo for many things. Why of all games in my pack was Twinbee the one to be a bad dump?
Part 1: TwinBee for Arcade
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
(Note this was originally from the Twinbee Arcade review when the two versions were not separate)
Just for fun, let’s talk about the Famicom version of Twinbee. This port would come out January 4th 1986. In fact it was the first game that year for the system. Konami wasn’t there yet with their iconic early games but Twinbee is still a fairly good effort. The port looks good for the time, the framerate is solid, music sounds nice and the scrolling is fantastic too! They even kept the 2 player mode with minimal technical problems and even kept what made co-op fun! There are some changes here and there like the green bell becoming a flashing red one. They also made it so if you hit the bell too much, it becomes an enemy so don’t collect him! He can give points but he’s not optimal for a high score run. It’s also a lot easier to get the multi shot in this one as now you can find it as candy and it’s even in the first level. If you want a different multi shot, try holding select before picking it up, it’ll change where the shots go. There’s also a bottle of milk and I think these give you an extra life? It makes the same noise as getting one via points so maybe it is that.
There are some interesting changes with this port. For one thing, the game is pretty easy until you get to the final stage which makes it a lot friendlier for less experienced shmup players. I still do wish stage 5 was better balanced though like if you don’t have a barrier by that point, pray. There’s also two different cheats to give you more lives but they don’t really help much when being underpowered hurts you so badly by the end. In case you still want 10 lives though, hold upright and A and then press start. It’ll still say 3 lives before the game begins but trust me, you have 10. You now lose both of your arms when getting hit once meaning it’s very easy to lose your ability to bomb in this version. You also now can only throw one bomb no matter what and I swear the aiming for it is worse, not even getting the blinking red bell can help as the shadows don’t throw bombs. There’s also still no ending or credits since it loops but that’s fine and to be expected for this kind of game. But the worst change of all that can’t be accepted, they changed the peaches to cherries, HOW DARE THEY!
This version of the game would be ported to the GBA via the Famicom Mini series. It’s about the same quality of any other release in that series but I did notice it lacks two players. Maybe the link cable supports it? The game would get the usual Virtual Console support outside of the 3DS for reasons I’ll go over another time. It would also land on NSO by the third update along with Mighty Bomb Jack and Metroid. What’s cool is that they even brought it over here making it the first time US players can try it besides again that 3DS thing but again LATER! It would also later get an SP version that lets you play on the 2nd loop immediately. Though I do wonder why it’s just the first game still on NSO but whatever I’ll never understand Konami. In the end it’s a good port but it’s still not the best game in the world. This probably made a great game back then if you had a friend too. Certainly one of the better games to come out compared to stuff like idk, Ikari. Could you imagine if Micronics made this port? Good thing Konami wasn’t stupid!
Oh and to wrap things up, I just wanna say I’m thankful it was on NSO because when I first tried to play this on an emulator, the graphics in stage 4 and 5 glitched up and started using the Twinbee logo for many things. Why of all games in my pack was Twinbee the one to be a bad dump?