Bells & Whistles Game Sample - Arcade
0Known as "Detana!! Twinbee" (出たな!! ツインビー) in Japan, Bells & Whistles is one of many excellent games in Konami's great "TwinBee" cute-em-up series. It is the fifth game in the series and the second arcade game in the series, and it marked the debut of the Japanese animator Jujiro Hamakawa or "Shuzilow HA" as the series primary character designer, and it is largely the most popular game in the entire series.
Several years have passed in this vertical-scrolling shooter since the events of the original TwinBee. Our heroes, Twinbee/Light and Winbee/Pastel (the pilots of whom were presented but didn't have names here) are just taking things easy when they get a distress call from a fair maiden named Melora from the planet Meru pleading for help. Naturally, they go to save her because she's cute and it's the right thing to do.
In this game, it's all about the bells. One of the staple abilities in the series is to shoot bells out of clouds. By shooting them repeteadly, you can change their color, which alters what affect they have on you when grabbed. The standard bells give points, while the others bestow a variety of upgrades to your weaponry. If you shoot a bell too long, it will get damaged and if shot further, a deadly bee will come out and try to kill you. Another important skill comes in the form of throwing bombs towards enemies and objects below you, which can unearth point-pick-ups and additional surprises. Shooting certain waves of enemies will give you point bonuses as well.
The game has great audio/visuals and is an all-around quality shooter that I recommend. As the game excels in vertical view rather than horizontal, the video was not scaled fully to 1280x720. Instead, it was scaled somewhat and I used the English and Japanese images as placeholders for a border. This is a video of the first seven minutes or so. Enjoy.