Collection essentials #240: Pop’n TwinBee (SNES)

Here we have our first “PAL” SNES game to make the list. This refers to the version(s) of a game released in Europe and/or Australia, and the term “PAL” comes from the color encoding system for televisions used in those regions. Televisions in America and Japan use a different system called “NTSC”, so the equivalent terms for games in those regions are “NTSC-U/C” and “NTSC-J”. Companies often market their games at least a little bit differently for the PAL release. You’ll notice here that the box is a yellow color as opposed to the black boxes that American games typically have. SNES games in PAL regions came in all sorts of different colors rather than having one standard like in the Americas. You’ll also notice the cartridge looks different, and that’s because they decided to go for the console and cartridge design of the Japanese Super Famicom system, though they kept the American name “Super Nintendo”. 

Pop’n TwinBee is yet another game from the amazing Konami. TwinBee is one of their four different series of shoot ‘em up games, and this is the first game from this series to make my list (there were several that came before which didn’t). The game, of course, came out in Japan first, and they decided to bring it over to Europe, but for some reason skipped over America. This was likely due to the game’s cutesy anime aesthetic, which they probably figured was fine for European audiences, but something American SNES owners of the ‘90s likely wouldn’t have taken to very well, and they honestly might have been right about that.

The most notable thing about TwinBee’s gameplay is its unique power-up system. In order to power up your ship, you need to collect bells of different colors which typically hide in clouds that appear fairly often. You must keep shooting a bell until it changes color, and different colors of bells represent different power-ups. Sometimes you have to shoot a bell quite a bit to change it into something you actually want. TwinBee arcade games used a vertical screen so that you’d have more space to work with when shooting your bells, so that’s a disadvantage of this non-arcade title because you obviously have less room to work with. It can feel like quite the hassle when you really need or want to get bells, but there are enemies harassing you at the same time, and it becomes super easy to accidentally shoot a bell instead of an enemy and mess up the power-up you wanted to get. Ugh! It doesn’t ruin the game or anything, though. Another thing that is not totally unique but is uncommon in shoot ‘em ups is a separate attack button, a bomb for “background” enemies that are well below the area where your ship is flying and therefore can’t be hit by your normal bullets that fly straight forward.

TwinBee games typically were made for arcades first, and then a scaled-down version would be made later for home consoles. But Pop’n TwinBee is an exception in that it was specifically made for the Super Nintendo, and never had an arcade version. Perhaps as a result, there are some options in this game that you don’t typically see in shoot ‘em ups. For one thing, there is a very wide variety of difficulty levels, which I always really appreciate because players from a huge number of skill levels can get whatever type of challenge (or lack thereof) that they desire. The game also boasts a really creative feature for two-player cooperative play which makes it so enemies will concentrate their fire on player 1. This is great because if you want to play with a friend who doesn’t normally play shoot ‘em ups, it can be a real struggle if they have little experience with the genre and don’t have the skill to avoid constant death. I’m surprised more games don’t have a feature like that.

I also want to note that there was another TwinBee game on SNES that also got a European release, a platformer called Rainbow Bell Adventures, and I also own that game. I am reeeeally close to adding it to this list…but I think what stops me is the fact that the European release of the game was strangely and needlessly made worse than the Japanese original in a lot of ways. I do really like the design of the box and manual and enjoy having it on the shelf so I may keep it anyway, but it’s a version of the game I never want to actually play.

Pop’N TwinBee may not be my absolute favorite shmup on the SNES or made by Konami, but that’s because the competition is pretty strong. It’s still a very fine and well-deserving essential that I am thrilled to own.