Force Gear / Twinbee Returns

[Ghegs]

So a while ago over Gradius Homeworld's forums there was a thread (props to deadmario) about a Gradius cameo in Tokimeki Memorial (PCE) in the form of a minigame. A very shmuppy minigame that plays like a caravan game, no less. So what's my caravan-loving self to do but buy a copy of Tokimeki Memorial and spend 2,5 hours unlocking that minigame as well as another one, also very shmuppy and familiar.

Here's some video footage from both of them:

Force Gear

Twinbee Returns

Disclaimer: These videos are just for demonstration and not any sort of superplays, these runs were my first runs in both games. I've since played Force Gear some more and increased my score quite a lot. If I do any actual superplays I'll just host them myself so I won't have to deal with Youtube's less-than-stellar quality.

[Ed Oscuro]

I was thinking (bad habit) about games hiding awesome hidden minigames in them. It makes marketing sense to do so, after all, but perhaps more so if you can give awesome minigames top billing...of course (almost) nobody ever heard of these until now. Bah!

[320x240]

Those huge laser beams in Force Gear are pretty old school...

[Turrican]

pure awesomeness. Is this tokimeki Hucard or cd?

[Galaxius]

Nice videos, Ghegs, post them up at the Gradius Homeworld.

[nZero]

That was unexpected, I didn't know they made a Caravan version of Hyper Duel for the PC Engine

[Ghegs]

pure awesomeness. Is this tokimeki Hucard or cd?

It's a CD game.

Also the player mech is called Alpha-Gray, if you want to add it to the ships' names list.

[Fenrir]

Wow. You can really find every shmup ever made in history in those boards.

What about Project-F, the Project-X mockup hidden in a later lever of Superfrog from Team 17 on Amiga?

I don't have an amiga emulator (only the real thing baby) so I can't really make any footage but...

Hey is there a thread here where we can put all the shmup minigames featured in non-shmup games? I can think of a few... Segagaga, or Pegasus on the Amiga again...
It's a shame that they're lost in millions of threads.

[BulletMagnet]

Hey is there a thread here where we can put all the shmup minigames featured in non-shmup games?

I believe it's been tried at least once before...I'm sure someone could probably find the most recent attempt with a search. I wouldn't personally mind stickying either it or a new attempt at a compendium, though I'm not sure whether or not the admins would approve of it.

[Turrican]

Hey is there a thread here where we can put all the shmup minigames featured in non-shmup games?

I believe it's been tried at least once before...I'm sure someone could probably find the most recent attempt with a search. I wouldn't personally mind stickying either it or a new attempt at a compendium, though I'm not sure whether or not the admins would approve of it.

Such a thing already exists, at least for the entire Amiga scene:

http://www.amigachapterone.com/

Click: Dossiers -> Les shmups & l'Amiga -> Cross-Over

[incognoscente]

Hey is there a thread here where we can put all the shmup minigames featured in non-shmup games?

Yes !

1. 2.

[Turrican]

Awesome. I posted the very same link in that other thread - April 2006.

[Ghegs]

It looks absolutely amazing, it's true, but the collision detection doesn't look really that great... maybe ghegs can tell more.

The hitbox does feel bulky, it's probably about the top-half of the mech. You can see at 3:50 how a laser passes through the lower portion of the mech without doing anything. It's because the mech bounces around a bit after getting hit that makes the collision detection feel wonky.

[Nuke]

Heh, sorry about that other thread. I did use the search function to try and avoid a duplicate, but it's shitty at best.
That said, how do you unlock the game? Is it trough the Konami code or do you have to do some ingame chores to unlock it?

[Ghegs]

Heh, sorry about that other thread. I did use the search function to try and avoid a duplicate, but it's shitty at best.
That said, how do you unlock the game? Is it trough the Konami code or do you have to do some ingame chores to unlock it?

S'okay.

It's an ingame chore. You join the computer club and then you keep doing work there. It's really simple and easy once you figure out what menu options do what (I consulted a FAQ) and then you just keep clicking...and clicking...and clicking. You unlock the Twinbee minigame at around the one hour mark and Force Gear at two, two and a half hours in. After which the game soon ends and the game can be played at will from the main menu. It really takes that long even though you don't actually play the "real" game. Most of it's spent on clicking the same icon over and over again and all too often fast-forwarding through some text an anime girl is trying to say to you.

Insert Credit did post some alternatives to unlocking it, but they're not in-game things. I don't think there's any in-game code or other alternative to unlocking it.

[jp]

Hmmm... I wonder if these are in the Saturn version as well. I shall have to investigate later...

[Ghegs]

Hmmm... I wonder if these are in the Saturn version as well. I shall have to investigate later...

Force Gear isn't. It's exclusive to the PCE version, I remember reading somewhere.

[jp]

Well that sucks.

[Ganelon]

Yeah, yet another topic gets stolen without any credit; pretty shameless IMO. As for finding stuff, you have to use the search -all- terms feature in these boards.

Anyway, you can probably thank Iga for these mini-games, since he programmed this version of Tokimeki Memorial and this version only. You just wonder how much more potential he could've made had he been a producer back in the 90s as opposed to the 2D-hostile age today...

[BulletMagnet]

Pardon the necro, but I just stumbled upon a strange video, and figured this would be the best place to post it. It appears to be some sort of RPG-themed mini-game, perhaps from one of the Tokimeki Memorial titles (it's definitely from Konami, whatever it is), though it also uses a Gradius-esque "power-up bar" in some capacity. For the main event fast-forward to the girl featured at the end: her special attack not only requires a DDR-style timed button sequence to activate, but summons a pixelated Vic Viper to attack the enemy.

Anyone have any idea what this is? I'd be curious to know, but I can't read the accompanying text.

[Cuilan]

Pardon the necro, but I just stumbled upon a strange video, and figured this would be the best place to post it. It appears to be some sort of RPG-themed mini-game, perhaps from one of the Tokimeki Memorial titles (it's definitely from Konami, whatever it is), though it also uses a Gradius-esque "power-up bar" in some capacity. For the main event fast-forward to the girl featured at the end: her special attack not only requires a DDR-style timed button sequence to activate, but summons a pixelated Vic Viper to attack the enemy.

Anyone have any idea what this is? I'd be curious to know, but I can't read the accompanying text.

That's one of the mini-games in Tokimeki Memorial 4, the newest entry in the main series (PSP exclusive). The first TokiMemo game had a similar RPG mini-game, but it's been so long since I've played through it I don't remember which (if any) cameos it had.

So the Saturn version of the first one has the Twinbee mini-game? I've owned it for like 10 years and never realized it had anything like that. Didn't like the computer club girl much so I didn't spend much time doing stuff she was interested in.