Game:

Detana!! TwinBee (1991)

Duration: 29:39

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8

A 1-credit clear of Bells & Whistles, the US version of Detana!! TwinBee. Arcade game played via MAME 0.209. Final score: 510,000. 1-life clear of the first loop...followed quickly by death in the second loop. With this, I've cleared all three of the arcade Twinbee games!

Rank management is a huge factor here. Enemies shoot fast, or slow, or not at all, and as far as I can tell it depends mainly on which power-ups you're holding, including Gwinbee. I think score may affect rank as well - I avoided gold bell pickups just in case, when going for the 1cc. Don't do that when going for score!

My powerup route here is: Get purple bell (tail shield) and 1 blue bell (speed up) on the first level. Then on level 5 or later (but not before), grab the bell pickup that can spawn on the ground after bombing an enemy, to get triple shot (important for the ladybug waves on stage 7). A contingency plan if no triple shot spawns is to get green and white bells. (There are lots of ground enemies on stage 5 and 6, so odds of getting triple shot are good) Avoid Gwinbee on stages 3-5. Another contingency plan: If you die on the stage 6 boss (which is quite possible), the ladybugs don't shoot if you have zero powerups, so recovery is possible if frantic.

The main reason for that route is to keep levels 1-4 kept quite manageable at low rank. Many enemies that *would* shoot at you if you were fully powered up...simply don't. That means you can mostly breeze through the first half of the game up to the stage 4 boss, which always takes some thoughtful dodging.

Shepardus showed that you can clear the whole game with zero powerups, and it's not insanely hard. But tail shield is so useful that partial power is easier than no powerups at all. Tail shield can block shots, and TwinBee-seeking plates and cutlery. Tail shield can even take out the rotating cudgels on stage 6, the spinning rectangles on stages 6+7, and - most importantly! - it can block the big scary chevron-shaped shots from the stage 7 midbosses.