Twinbee Da!! - More than meets the eye

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 10:23 pm

This is to express my apologies to Twinbee Da!!, which I reviewed at HG101 without the necessary attention - that's what happens when you don't have the actual cart nor an usb controller to play it at ease on emulators.

I wrote the game was a nice overhaul of the first Twinbee, but overall a poor effort for being only four stages long.
A reader wrote me an email saying I am wrong, the game does feature six stages, the last two are accessible by simply finishing the first four in sequence. He is right of course, a quick playthrough with the KGB3 I just bought was enough to bring me in front of the five stage bosses, (a sequence in typical gradius fashion, in front of heaven's gates if I interpreted the kanji right). I died at 787,500 without having seen the sixth stage but It's definitely doable.

Also cool was to witness some of the later power-ups, like the, uh, bouncing baseball sphere which is a lot helpful. In the end, I was pleasanty surprised by Twinbee Da!! and I am grateful that I were pointed out to my mistakes. I reconsidered the game and I like it a lot more now. Actually, can't wait to see how the PSP remake turned out to be and how much it is faithful to the original!

Now I'm off to see that sixth stage! ^_^

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 1:49 am

Ok, 1CCed it. (1.306.200). The sixth stage is basically just one last boss - but it was worth to witness the immortal line:

"I DARE YOU TO FELL CYBER POPPO"

they just don't make'em like this anymore.

This game is directed by Ueda-san, btw.

SFKhoa · Post by **SFKhoa** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 2:35 am

Is this regarding the original or the PSP remake?

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:18 am

SFKhoa wrote:Is this regarding the original or the PSP remake?

the original found in the european Konami GB Collection 3.

SFKhoa · Post by **SFKhoa** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 3:06 pm

Ooh. You should try out the remake they did for Twinbee Portable [PSP]. In any case, it's great that you like Twinbee Da!

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 7:44 pm

I will - I'm already buying PSP games, I plan to get the system before Dracula X Chronicles is released. Or wait for the new redesign, anyway.

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:45 pm

I have this now too, original JP GB b/w version. I like it quite a bit. I can't believe it came out in 1990. The graphics are very nice. The bosses even show damage. I like how the music changes when you get power ups like the other early Twinbee games.

Twinbee Da!! is easy, but there is a hard mode that occurs after you beat the game that is much harder. If you start a game after you beat it, enemies shoot more often, enemies leave shots after they die, and the ghost bee that gives you your power ups back doesn't appear after you die. Does the PSP version also have the hard mode?

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 6:42 am

I haven't managed to fell Cyber Poppo in the PSP version yet

There's far too many bullets on screen, even though you can shoot the lollipop things. Probably just need to look at his patterns better. I usually play PSP stuff right before I go to bed so I'm not sharp enough about it. I'm not good about shooters with big hitboxes either. I think that I can just glide through a loosely scattered bullet pattern like I'm playing ESP Galuda or something and I end up getting hit.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 4:09 am

Cyber Poppo fell by my hands even on PSP version:

1cc - 1.765.300

Absolutely sweet remake!

Manabu Namiki is credited in the sound department at the end.