Pop 'n Twinbee (SNES, 1993)
Graphics-8 Sound-7.5 Control-7 Challenge-8 Story-4.5
Level Design-7 Frustration-8 Fun-7/?* Originality-5.5
Overall Score-7
*2-player
+
Some nice effects (multijointed final boss with huge beam, parallax cliff)
Little slowdown
2-player co-op
Pretty good art direction overall (similar to Fantasy Zone)
Smart bombs
Shield power up
Health bar
Two planes of enemies (air and ground) and respective attacks to deal with them
Up to four gun drones (pick one out of three formations before playing - can't be changed in-game)
Good bosses overall (nearly all of them have two phases)
Nice animations between levels (not much of a story though; just cute scenes adding some personality to the game)
Co-op only moves (throw and energy sharing; similar to Toejam & Earl)
+/-
Very long battleship stage
Smart bombs make you unable to shoot while they're active
Auto-targeting for the bomb attack
You start out with quite a few different moves (dampens the sense of progression a bit)
Melee attack (powerful but risky and rarely needed)
-
Trial & error (some inconsistencies about what you can use the bomb attack on, attacks from behind, boss patterns, some shots from off screen (rival boss), the power up system)
No manual speed adjustment and the speed up power up (blue bell) takes you to the slowest speed if picked up when you're at full speed (making the game much harder)
Muffled and high pitched voices (screams when you die or punch which gets annoying pretty soon)
Sometimes hard to differentiate your bullets from the enemy's (white shots)
The juggling of power ups distracts greatly from the action and it's easy to either miss bells or get the wrong power up (can't shoot solely at either the bells or the enemies; it's also annoying how they bounce out of the screen so you have to wait a second or two for them to come back similar to enemies in some beat 'em ups)
Somewhat uneven difficulty (increases pretty drastically towards the end, second to final boss, some hectic segments where you should've saved a bomb)
Somewhat samey backgrounds
Somewhat repetitive
No alternate main weapon (upgrading it changes the beam a little though) and no weapon inventory
Somewhat choppy scrolling during the second to last boss fight
Level Design-7 Frustration-8 Fun-7/?* Originality-5.5
Overall Score-7
*2-player
+
Some nice effects (multijointed final boss with huge beam, parallax cliff)
Little slowdown
2-player co-op
Pretty good art direction overall (similar to Fantasy Zone)
Smart bombs
Shield power up
Health bar
Two planes of enemies (air and ground) and respective attacks to deal with them
Up to four gun drones (pick one out of three formations before playing - can't be changed in-game)
Good bosses overall (nearly all of them have two phases)
Nice animations between levels (not much of a story though; just cute scenes adding some personality to the game)
Co-op only moves (throw and energy sharing; similar to Toejam & Earl)
+/-
Very long battleship stage
Smart bombs make you unable to shoot while they're active
Auto-targeting for the bomb attack
You start out with quite a few different moves (dampens the sense of progression a bit)
Melee attack (powerful but risky and rarely needed)
-
Trial & error (some inconsistencies about what you can use the bomb attack on, attacks from behind, boss patterns, some shots from off screen (rival boss), the power up system)
No manual speed adjustment and the speed up power up (blue bell) takes you to the slowest speed if picked up when you're at full speed (making the game much harder)
Muffled and high pitched voices (screams when you die or punch which gets annoying pretty soon)
Sometimes hard to differentiate your bullets from the enemy's (white shots)
The juggling of power ups distracts greatly from the action and it's easy to either miss bells or get the wrong power up (can't shoot solely at either the bells or the enemies; it's also annoying how they bounce out of the screen so you have to wait a second or two for them to come back similar to enemies in some beat 'em ups)
Somewhat uneven difficulty (increases pretty drastically towards the end, second to final boss, some hectic segments where you should've saved a bomb)
Somewhat samey backgrounds
Somewhat repetitive
No alternate main weapon (upgrading it changes the beam a little though) and no weapon inventory
Somewhat choppy scrolling during the second to last boss fight