Go! Benny! (NES)

Horizontal
Checkpoints OFF
1 Difficulty level
5 Stages
Ship speed by icons
- - - - - - -
Developed by NTDEC / Mega Soft
Published by Gluk in 1992

Even without actually playing the game, it's a given for everyone that Go! Benny! (or Corre Benny, the clumsy title in Spanish) was never supposed to be anything more than just another piss-poor, derivative scrolling shooter with little in the way of excitement. Or fun. As an obscure and pale shadow of other bug-themed shmups such as Taito's Insector X, Go! Benny! puts the player in the shoes of a bee that must battle insects and other wildlife animals in a game that goes from point A to point B in an absolutely stale rhythm. What else could one expect from another unlicensed game by Mega Soft / NTDEC anyway?

Only button B is used in Go! Benny!, but try to get a turbo controller if you're not a fan of button mashing. As the box art indicates Benny the bee goes about with a bow and arrow, that's why his shots resemble darts. From the single dart of his default condition Benny evolves to a four-dart spreading pattern once he takes two power-ups. Items are concealed inside beehive nests that float on screen and must be dismantled with your firepower. Besides P for power-ups you'll also come across S for speed-ups and 1UP for extra lives. It doesn't get more complicated than that. There's at least one extra life per level, and even though the counter shows only four lives it still keeps track of the extra ones you pick along the way.

Happy bees and caterpillars after the rain

To be honest, the first impression I had of this game was not bad. Not much animation anywhere, but taking down butterflies and other bugs with fast-moving darts fits the bill nicely for a cheap NES shooter. Two or three speed-ups bring you up to a decent moving capability, dodging isn't too demanding and graphical themes follow some sort of natural logic with primitive parallax (garden, sunny rainbow day, mountain countryside, sunset, night time). The enemy gallery is marginally increased with each level won, with bosses consisting of larger creatures: a spider, a caterpillar, a deadly snail, a bat and a huge Parodius-inspired bird in the last stage.

Keeping it simple isn't a fault per se in any game. Simplicity can be blamed for an easy challenge / lack thereof or for low aesthetic standards, but never for bringing a game down on technical merits. Go! Benny! had all the ingredients to be a straightforward shooter of regular simplicity, but even this wasn't able for NTDEC to accomplish. As you fly up and down in your killing spree you'll inevitably come across instances where you'll die with no reason at all. You're just happily flying and then BAM! you're dead. It's as if the game wanted you to die no matter what. And depending where you stand you'll be too slow to overcome the next swarm of enemies, losing more lives right afterwards.

Speaking of dying, don't rush to get the items you want unless every cell in the honeycomb has been taken apart. If a single one is left and you touch it you'll die. Care must be taken with a specific enemy that might also come from behind, an ant that fires a single projectile that follows you around for some time before leaving the screen. Other than that, it's good practice to fly low and only go up when necessary, paying careful attention not to crash into slow-moving or spore-like bullets that often blend with the backgrounds.

Benny running on the first level of his game
(courtesy of YouTube user FamicomGuide)

Second to the crazy sudden deaths, another botched aspect of Go! Benny! is the scoring system. It's as straightforward as it gets, but that's not the problem. I can live with the fact that you don't see the score unless you advance from one level to the next or when the credit is over. However, high score buffering isn't well implemented since it seems that completion/1CC scores aren't computed correctly. During the couple of failed and full runs I did I noticed that one of my 1CC scores was much lower than the score I achieved right afterwards even though I bit the dust halfway into the final stage. Apparently all the points you get in the final level aren't added to the result of the clear.

Once the final boss is beaten players won't be treated to a proper ending. The victory song snippet plays and BAM! the game reverts back to the title screen. Benny does go (Benny corre) wherever he's supposed to go to destroy bouncing ants, snails, fireflies and flowers, but there is no special reward for him in the end. Nor for those brave or masochistic enough to get into his shoes.

Here's the high score I got after my final moments with the game:

Seicross (NES)

Horizontal
Checkpoints ON
1 Difficulty level
6 Stages (loopable)
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Nichibutsu
Published by FCI in 1988

Have you ever wondered about how obscurity can hide cool games in plain sight? We can always blame it on their sources, as is the case with Seicross and developer Nichibutsu, which is mostly known by drab titles such as Moon Cresta and Terra Cresta. As a result, many shooter fans might have missed out on the tight arcade action of Sector Zone, which when ported to the NES had its name changed to Seicross.

I admit, on the outside Seicross isn't that much of a charmer. Blame it on the first impression of graphics (mostly dark scenery), music (not engaging at all) and controls (which feel kinda clunky on an initial contact, a sensation that's quickly forgotten once you get used to them). What Seicross does right, and that's often the reason why I appreciate any video game at its heart, is the nice challenge provided by decent gameplay rules and the continuous progression into more intricate levels and obstacles. That's why it ends up being an above average title no matter how you look at it.

Gliding to glory, here I go

The mission of the player is to glide through the grid surface of Seicross avoiding obstacles and dueling against the incoming hoverbikers arriving from all sides. According to the manual, you're piloting a powered mini-bike in order to rescue your fellows who escaped the wrath of an enemy race in planet Colura. Never mind the fact that you look like a postman while your opponents all wear cool helmets. Postman duties were never easy anywhere I guess, especially when you're dropped from a top hatch into such a dangerous field as in Seicross.

You can fire with any button in the controller, preferably with some sort of turbofire function because the game does not have it by default. Special attention must be taken to how long you hold the fire button though, since the more you shoot the faster your energy fuel runs out – in fact, if you don't let go of the button chances are you'll die horribly before you get to the first batch of radioactive fuel canisters. That doesn't mean however that Seicross is any close to fuel-critical games like Scramble. Just keep your cool and shoot as necessary and you'll be fine, the firing rhythm of the game isn't that taxing anyway.

Enemy bikers will always try to ram into you, but they never shoot anything. The good news is that you can ram into them as well, sending them to their deaths against walls/obstacles and still winning points for it. Bullets will always come from stationary turrets and enemies coming from the front. Dodging them isn't that complicated, but it's very common to get cornered by a bullet spread. I remember most of my deaths being due to crashing against something as I tried to grab one of the items the game threw at me. Besides the fuel canisters and the stray blue hostages found in the wild, one of the most common ones is the star uncovered by destroying green trees, which are worth 1.000 points. Dinosaur fossils hide a "Pilpul" alien that's worth 5.000 points, so don't ever stop shooting if you come across one of these skeletons.

Dinosaurs actually seem to be one of the defining elements in the enemy gallery. Seicross doesn't have any bosses per se, but all even levels end with at least two large dinosaurs that uncover weird heads also worth 5.000 points. Interesting details: while odd-numbered levels scroll at a fast speed, even-numbered levels scroll at a slower speed and are often crowded with more obstacles with no enemy bikers at all. Some special items such as swords, clocks, a pair of boots and 1UPs appear when you hit stone-like shells that get pushed forwards (with the exception of the 1UP none of them does anything noteworthy). That said, the most important item you can get is the special "power" star that's released by destroying a radar buoy that looks like a clown's head. It triples your firing stream and allows it to get through obstacles. According to the instruction manual, if you fail to destroy the radar buoy the enemy's attack gets stronger.

A quick credit of Seicross on the NES
(courtesy of YouTube user ShiryuGL)

When going for higher scores the most precious items are the hidden brain tokens worth 10.000 points each, which appear and quickly drift towards the right side of the screen when hitting a few determined enemies. Scoring is also important because it's the main source of extra lives, first at 30.000 points and then for every 50.000 points afterwards. Finally, each saved blue man since the last time you died is worth 1.000 points at the end of the level. As you can see, playing for score involves many variables, and even though marathon runs are possible due to the game's difficulty plateauing once it loops Seicross is far from being a piece of cake. After the 6th stage the game displays the message GET TO PET and starts over with no fanfarre or proper ending screen, but the loops are restricted to the neverending repetition of only stages 5 and 6. The sixth level is especially claustrophobic, with lots of traps and tight spaces to move through. Keep in mind that it's safe to hug the upper/lower borders of the screen.

If you're able to accept the terribly monotonous soundtrack, Seicross is certainly bound to provide some fun thanks to the sci-fi Tron-like ambience and the emphasis on dealing with obstacles, bullets and random bikers trying to push you against walls in fast scrolling stages. I must confess that my general expectations for this game were pleasantly exceeded. If you happen to like it perhaps you should also try its spiritual sequel Magmax. I haven't done it myself, so that's probably one of the next NES titles I'll be playing.

If I remember correctly, the run for the high score shown below ended in stage 7-2.

Stinger (NES)

Horizontal / Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
1 Difficulty level
7 Stages (loopable)
Ship speed by icons
- - - - - - -
Developed by Konami
Published by Konami in 1987

Going by the name a lot of people might believe Stinger is a regular NES game, just like many others. At least that's what I thought for a while some time ago. Look closely though. It's actually a TwinBee title in disguise, in fact the second in the series after the arcade original and its NES port. Originally born on the Famicom Disk System and later converted to the cartridge format, it received a name change in the West that's quite puzzling and certainly makes it prone to bad jokes. Chances are you already heard people referring to it as "Stinker". I did so myself, after all I was never really into the gameplay of the TwinBee series to begin with.

The most noticeable alteration made on the cartridge release is the absence of the third simultaneous player (!) from the Japanese disk version. The three characters in the box cover are reminiscent of the original artwork but can't share the same screen anymore. Another major change is in the story, which sees you fighting evil aliens who kidnapped a genius professor in order to steal a sweetener formula from his brain (the start of the game shows a brief animation for the professor's abduction). The fate of the world rests in your ability to pilot a Stinger ship in order to rescue him. Even though it's not that much more accomplished – or challenging – than the original Famicom game, Stinger definitely packs more variety in colors and environments, as well as a whole different approach to bosses. Poor stage guardians, they've been reduced to wimpy wrecks that look like leftovers from Parodius or Fantasy Zone.

Besides the regular gameplay introduced in TwinBee, Stinger also incorporates a departure from the original formula that, to this day, is unique in the series. It sort of alternates the well-known vertical scrolling stages with horizontal ones. The relation isn't exactly symmetrical since only stages 1, 3 and 7 are horizontals. Strangely enough, gameplay behavior isn't the same across both types of levels.

Stinger to the rescue of professor Cinnamon
(courtesy of YouTube user GAMEINFO)

Starting from stage 2 the characters behave according to the classic gameplay of the franchise: shots are fired with button B and ground bombs are fired with button A. Many special items and upgrades can be collected at ground level, whereas hitting most incoming clouds releases yellow bells that can be juggled by successive shots. Once hit by a determined number of shots a bell switches to a different color before reverting back to yellow, then the shot cycle for a different color begins anew. The new colors provide the following upgrades: blue (speed up), red (laser), white (double shot), blinking blue (shield), blinking red (options). When collected successively, yellow bells increase in value from 500 to 1.000, 5.000 and 10.000 points, a number that's only reset to 500 if you lose a yellow bell or if you take a different bell color.

In horizontal levels both the aerial shots and ground bombs are fired with button B. Button A fires hearts upwards, but these can only be used to juggle bells (they don't hurt enemies). Ground enemies almost don't shoot in these levels so they aren't that much of a threat, which makes horizontal sections more manageable than the overhead ones. Even though the rules for bells remain the same in both types of levels, there's a pivotal difference between them when you get hit. If your arms are damaged in vertical areas an ambulance will cross the screen for you to heal them; if your main body gets shot you die and your ghost flies away to the top, but if you manage to get it back you recover not only your life but also the powers you had when you "died" (both the ambulance and the ghost happen only once per life). In horizontal sections you can recover only the ghost, with no ambulance in sight, which makes sense since the horizontal Stinger looks more like a regular ship and lacks the arms of the original TwinBee design.

There's no doubt the thrill of the game is in juggling yellow bells to maximize the score. However, in order to do that properly you need to acquire a minimum amount of upgrades. Besides a few mandatory speed-ups (blue bells), a good shot enhancer is very welcome. The best ones are obtained at ground level: a half moon gives you a 3-way shot and the star is supposed to give you a 5-way shot. In all my runs I never came across the star, but I found the half moon to be an all-around excellent weapon. In any case, there are so many other ground items to pick that learning what each one does might take a while. Most of them are converted into points (money bags and all sorts of strange symbols such as an ostrich head), some provide weapon enhancers (such as L and R, which give you single side shots) and a few others deserve more special attention. The cross, for example, grants you an extra life, while the professor's head serves as access to a bonus area after you beat the boss. There you'll only come across clouds with yellow bells in order to get as many points as you can before the time expires. No fruit is to be seen anywhere, as was the case with TwinBee. Besides the 1UP cross item, the game also grants score-based extends at 100K, 200K and then for every 200K until 1 million points.

Life is vertical too, you know

Powering up the ship also influences the music, which changes to a more upbeat higher tempo tune until you die or lose your weapon. This lack of variety in the soundtrack is only left aside during the final stage in outer space, which is actually the easiest one if you can get there with a decent speed + shot combo. As I mentioned above, the bosses are a joke and should pose no treat to anyone, that is as long as you're able to use a turbo controller for proper autofire (Stinger has no built-in autofire). Speaking of difficulty, the second loop adds very little in terms of challenge: just one type of enemy for each scrolling direction, and apparently a lower shot count for bell color cycling.

Due to the nature of the power-up system and the way enemy flocks behave, often ramming into you in erratic or unpredictable patterns, trying to power back up after dying can make you lose multiple lives very quickly. Vertical stages are especially aggravating on that matter. On the other hand, if you're able to cling to a powered-up ship with a shield chances are you'll cruise through the game very easily. As for co-op play, I never play my shmups with a friend but it's important to note that, just like in all other games in the series, Stinger allows you to join forces with your buddy to fire a more powerful shot pattern.

My longest credit ended in stage 3-4 (18) with the score below. The run was somewhat abbreviated by graphical glitches that appeared when I resumed playing after having to pause the game for a few hours. Coming up next in the series for me is TwinBee 3, still on the NES/Famicom.