Detana!! TwinBee/Bells & Whistles (Twinbee 4)(ARC, 1991)
Graphics-8.5 Sound-8.5 Control-7.5 Challenge-8.5* Story-4-5
Level Design-7.5 Frustration-9* Fun-7* Originality-5.5
Overall Score-7.5
*1-player
+
2-player co-op
Decent cutscenes between levels
Charge shot (air to air only)
Clone trail power up
A non-intrusive text pop-up tells you what you've just picked up
Pretty good variation
Air and ground attacks
Good art direction
Shield power up (only appears on levels 1-2?)
Some good bosses (the third one makes you use the charge shot to spin its shield and reveal the weak point)
Ship linking power up (link to the green ship to gain a shield to the side you chose (1 hit) and extra fire power)
Smart bombs (trigger when touched, rare)
Some nice effects (parallax, scaling, linescrolling for a pseudo 3D effect on one of the backgrounds, raster effects)
Large and detailed bosses
Difficulty options (easy-very hard, lives per credit, coin worth)
Pretty impressive music
+/-
Some bosses go down rather quickly
Air and ground attacks are combined into one button press (no need for a second button)
Top speed is too fast
Pnly one level of upgrades for your main shot? (can also switch between double forward or diagonal shot)
Can lose your arms (air to ground attack) but the ambulance power up replaces them
-
Lose all power ups when dying (gets hard to recover after a few levels even with unlimited credits)
No auto-fire (could've used the second button for this)
No manual speed adjustment (need to collect speed power ups, there are also speed down power ups...)
Juggling more than a couple of bells at once really distracts from the action on screen and the hit sound gets a bit annoying after a while (you need to hit a bell 8+ times to make it change color/turn into something other than points and if you hit it once after that it changes back to points)
Pretty easy final boss and pretty short final level, the scaling that happens when you lose the green ship is a bit distracting
Some trial & error (boss patterns, back attacks - can't shoot backwards/down)
Level Design-7.5 Frustration-9* Fun-7* Originality-5.5
Overall Score-7.5
*1-player
+
2-player co-op
Decent cutscenes between levels
Charge shot (air to air only)
Clone trail power up
A non-intrusive text pop-up tells you what you've just picked up
Pretty good variation
Air and ground attacks
Good art direction
Shield power up (only appears on levels 1-2?)
Some good bosses (the third one makes you use the charge shot to spin its shield and reveal the weak point)
Ship linking power up (link to the green ship to gain a shield to the side you chose (1 hit) and extra fire power)
Smart bombs (trigger when touched, rare)
Some nice effects (parallax, scaling, linescrolling for a pseudo 3D effect on one of the backgrounds, raster effects)
Large and detailed bosses
Difficulty options (easy-very hard, lives per credit, coin worth)
Pretty impressive music
+/-
Some bosses go down rather quickly
Air and ground attacks are combined into one button press (no need for a second button)
Top speed is too fast
Pnly one level of upgrades for your main shot? (can also switch between double forward or diagonal shot)
Can lose your arms (air to ground attack) but the ambulance power up replaces them
-
Lose all power ups when dying (gets hard to recover after a few levels even with unlimited credits)
No auto-fire (could've used the second button for this)
No manual speed adjustment (need to collect speed power ups, there are also speed down power ups...)
Juggling more than a couple of bells at once really distracts from the action on screen and the hit sound gets a bit annoying after a while (you need to hit a bell 8+ times to make it change color/turn into something other than points and if you hit it once after that it changes back to points)
Pretty easy final boss and pretty short final level, the scaling that happens when you lose the green ship is a bit distracting
Some trial & error (boss patterns, back attacks - can't shoot backwards/down)