Twinnbee Land

Twinnbee Land

Release type: Freeware
Release date: January, 1997
Levels: 24
Author: PPP Team
Website: Bilou Homebrew's Blog
Related games: none

In Japan, Konami’s Twinbee series has long been the bouncy, juvenile counterpart to Konami’s flagship shooter Gradius. Outside of Japan, the series is fairly obscure. There’s Stinger for the NES, and then in some territories there’s a curious spin-off game for the Super NES, Pop ’n TwinBee: Rainbow Bell Adventures. Unlike the rest of the Twinbee series, Rainbow Bell Adventures is a side-scrolling platformer in that refined and codified 16-bit mold. To hear him tell it, this game is also one of Sylvain Martin’s biggest influences.

Thus, with a few logistical tweaks, we have Twinnbee Land. Whereas in the SNES game the sprites are kind of enormous, here they are tiny. The SNES game has rolling terrain with plenty of diagonal surfaces, allowing characters to bowl along; here we have a maze-like level design with huge jumps across open spaces. The game takes more liberties as it goes on, with odd character transformations – first the ship grows in size, then turns into a huge Mazinger-style mech. Combine this absurdity with the deliberately cutesy voice samples, and perhaps you can take Twinnbee Land as an affectionate satire.

The game is actually rather long, and is dotted with fairly complex boss fights in the vein of the Badman games. Naturally enough, many background elements are borrowed from PPP’s earlier efforts. Sometimes they fit well; sometimes not. The character floats about half a tile above certain platforms, for no discernable reason.

Catching bell in Twinnbee Land

Of particular note is the jetpack, which – rather like Commander Xeen’s vertical jump – allows the player to rocket upward much farther than a normal leap will allow. It’s a little awkward to use, and one forgets about it, which is as well for such a powerful feature. As with Xeen, this command often lends the level design another layer.

Unlike Xeen, the design itself is often confusing. The geography tends to lead the player away from goals rather than toward them, and the properties or behaviors of background elements are not always clear, occasionally leading the player into inadvertent traps. Combine this frustration with slightly awkward control mapping, and at times feels like the game is deliberately undermining the player’s efforts, as in games such as I Wanna Be The Guy.

The question of tone is central to Twinnbee Land. It seems like a straight tribute, until it starts to get bizarre. It seems inviting until it starts to pull the rug out from under the player. It’s unclear exactly what the game wants to do. Whatever it presents, it seems to immediately subvert in some way, whether deliberately or not. There’s even an animation where the character holds up a nudie picture for the player to see. Why? Well, presumably to subvert expectations. Which seems to sum the game up.

Story

The sorcerer Albamar has stolen the rainbow bells of the land of Albomor. Soon the land will fall to the sorcerer's chaos. Twinnbee has been chosen to as Albomor's savior. So now, at the controls of a new ship, he takes wing to the sorcerer.

Twinnbee is ready to go!!!!

Instructions

On joypad:

Jump: Up

Shooting: A or B

Dash:

Left: Left + B

Right: Right + B

Up: Up + B

On keyboard:

Directional arrows

Fire: Space and enter

Dash: 0. /

Credits

Piet/Pypein/Pascal

Links

Sites

• Blog post by Sylvain Martin
• Cyborg Jeff's download site

Interviews / Articles

• Displays of Affection (DIYGamer)

Misc. Links

• Play Twinnbee Land online

Downloads

• Twinnbee Land (583.9 kB)
• Cyborg Jeff's story theme (90.8 kB)