I actually played some Saturn recently, and zipped through both games on the Twinbee Deluxe Pack disc. So, my thoughts:
Detana! Twinbee Yahho Deluxe Pack - I beat both games on this disc, Detana!! Twinbee and Twinbee Yahho!. They are ports of Konami's two Twinbee arcade games, the first from '91 and the second from '95. I have at least one version of most of the Twinbee shmups (I have the three NES/FC games (Twinbee, Stinger, and Twinbee 3), the SNES game (Pop'n Twinbee), and this collection), and both of these games are pretty fun stuff. These two games and the SNES game all play and look VERY similarly, so Detana was obviously successful considering that it got two sequels done in the same style. The NES games have some side-scrolling levels, but the three later titles are entirely vertical-scrolling. The graphics are very bright and colorful and look great, though the second game has better graphics than the first one, as you would expect. There is a bit of sensory overload at times though, as enemies come from above and below and you have to dodge them and their fire, remember to target and bomb enemies on the ground because this series has Xevious-style bombing in it, and try to juggle those bells at the same time. It can be tricky, and it's easy to die and/or miss a bell -- and when you do you won't score as much. Yahho has a meter on the side for consecutive bells gotten for instance, so if you miss one it empties and you won't score as much.
Returning to the bomb system though, I've never liked games with this Xevious-like fire-and-bomb system, either in Xevious, Dragon Spirit, Twinbee, Soukyugurentai, or Galactic Attack/RayForce. Bomb/missile-target systems work in 3d games like Star Fox 64 and After Burner, but in top-down games I don't like how restrictive the targeting systems in most of these games are. Of the games I mentioned above though this series is one of the most playable -- there is more forgiveness in how accurate you need to be, and you can get stuff like homing attacks too, in these two games anyway. So yeah, I don't like this (if you must have separate attacks for air and ground, do it like Raptor and just have different weapons which fire ahead, instead of using these annoying bomb-target cursors!), but I don't find the system as annoying here as in, say, Dragon Spirit.
The other main issue with these games is length, if you don't restrict yourself artificially. These two games are both somewhat short and give you infinite continues right from where you died, so if you just keep hitting continue you'll beat them quickly, as I did. I did die quite a few times, particularly in Detana (which I think is a bit harder than Yahho, probably -- the second to last boss killed me quite a few times), but these games are a whole lot easier than Konami's main shmup series, Gradius, that's for sure. Both of these games have Gradius-like easy final bosses, and there is some amusing comedy, but I do wish Yahho had a better last boss, even if that ending bit was pretty amusing. Ah well, it's a fun game anyway, with mostly good gameplay and some silly comedy. Both of these games have two player co-op too, as do the NES games as well, which is nice. Overall I like Gradius a lot more than Twinbee, but these games are fun things to play once in a while. I'll definitely play them again and try to get better -- I may have beaten the games, but with the number of game overs I got, I didn't get anywhere near the high score table, and that does matter in this kind of game.
Is there a good list of recommended Saturn imports out there? I'm in Tokyo for the next few months, and I'd like to buy a system with a few games. I *loved* the Saturn when it came out, and I've always wanted to check out what's available from Japan.
For something not a shmup... Willy Wombat. It's an interesting isometric platformer with full English voice acting. Steamgear Mash is also fun -- it's an isometric run & gun shooter, pretty much. Also Bulk Slash is good, if you can find it. And yeah, Daytona: Circuit Edition, get if if you like the game. If you like them, also consider some puzzle games like the Puyo Puyo, Taisen Puzzle Dama, and/or Magical Drop games. (fixed, Daytona, not Outrun.
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