Pop'n TwinBee

Overview

Pop'n TwinBee is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up from Konami featuring TwinBee and WinBee, two anthropomophic robots colored blue and pink respectively. The TwinBee series is a notable example of a "cute 'em up", and Pop'n TwinBee is the Super Famicom debut of the series. The SNES version was released in Japan and Europe in 1993.

Pop'n TwinBee uses the advancements to the series introduced with the prior game Detana!! TwinBee. The game was followed by Pop'n TwinBee: Rainbow Bell Adventures the subsequent year, which is more of a side-scrolling platformer.

There is a Game Boy game of the same name in Europe, but this is based on a separate and much older TwinBee game (known as TwinBee Da!! in Japan) from 1990 that was brought over to Europe in 1994 and renamed Pop'n TwinBee to capitalize on the success of this game.

Gameplay

As a vertically-oriented shoot 'em up, the player's goal is to simply make it to the top of the stage without getting hit by any enemies or their bullets. The player has a few power-ups, such as options, and has a finite number of "bombs" which create a dozen smaller TwinBees that clear the screen of enemies for a few seconds. Before starting a stage, the player can choose between a few configurations of how options follow the craft, maximizing their offensive or defensive capabilities.

The player can also shoot bells that float through the air: each shot sends the bell flying further ahead, and the player can juggle them until they change color. The regular golden bells are worth a handful of points, but other colors will generate various effects depending on their color.