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Two things are almost universally true of early SHMUPs: They're tough as nails, and
they're tough as nails. Even when they're all pastel-colored, and have unusual things
shooting at you like radishes and whatnot. SHMUPs, almost uniformly, don't care about
what's actually flying around the screen so long as one of them's yours, and it's constantly
being barraged by moai heads or bamboo shoots or whatever, leading most commonly to your
dying in a giant conflagration and plunking another quarter into whatever machine got
you into that state. Fortunately, you don't need to do that with this Famicom Disk System
version of Twinbee, graciously sent by Marc in Fresh Meadows, New York. You don't even
need to flip the freakin' disc! Seriously. The other side of this thing? OTHELLO.
Konami's Twinbee and Sega's Fantasy Zone are generally considered the progenitors of the
"Cute 'em up" subgenre: The plot's pushed to the back of the experience to make room
for colorful enemies, colorful sprites, colorful everything. Gone are the days of the flat
black space shooter or the desperate-to-not-be-completely-black starfields of its brethren like Gradius. Hell,
part of the challenge here is just keeping what's friendly and what's not straight in
your mind. And there's a heck of a lot to juggle in this vertical-scroller, from the
stuff flying around and shooting crap at you to land-based targets that have to be bombed
all Xevious-style to... well, bells. Literally juggling bells. I'd love to see The Passing
Zone or Penn & Teller pull this *** off.
Yes, you've gotta fire at clouds to unleash the bells, and then fire at bells until they
change color, and then collect 'em WITHOUT HITTING THEM AGAIN to obtain your delicious,
delicious powerup. It's one of the few times in SHMUPpery that you actually don't want
to shoot something, and it's a MASSIVE paradigm shift for a little while. Fortunately, though,
once you've gotten the hang of it you won't have that much of an issue loading yourself
up with shadow ships, extended blasters, and the like... just in time for the game to ***
you with even more hectic enemy patterns and screen after screen of ordnance. Oh, and this
being a game from 1985, the concept of "continues" hadn't really solidified yet, so you're back
to level one each time you scrub out. At least the graphics are cute and the music's nice
and bright. There's a reason they put this track on DDR 8th Mix.
But this was only the beginning, folks. Not only did Twinbee bring the Cute-'em-up to
the Famicom - or, in this case, the Famicom Disk System - but it also included two-player
simultaneous co-op, which was kind of a rarity in the genre at the time. This would even
be extended to three-player co-op in the immediate sequel... but since Marc was awesome enough
to send us that one as well, that'll have to wait until next week's edition of Famicom
Friday. In the meantime, make sure to eat your radishes, lest they begin to fly and
attempt to shoot down cute bee-shaped fighter craft. Your mother was right.