Slap Fight MD (Mega Drive)

Vertical
Checkpoints ON
4 Difficulty levels
3/4 Stages (loopable)
Ship speed by icons
- - - - - - -
Developed by Toaplan
Published by Tengen in 1993

In order to understand the many chapters in the history of the development of the shooting genre, it's important to get to know at least a few pivotal games. Two examples are Xevious, one of the cornerstones of the vertical subgenre, and Gradius, the game that paved the way for more intricate horizontal shooters. Even though the design of both games doesn't have much in common, the devs at Toaplan were certainly keen on blending their styles with a little extra influence of Terra Cresta. The result was Slap Fight, the second arcade shooter the company released after Tiger-Heli.

The late release of a port for the Japanese Mega Drive was a relatively weird one, both in terms of timing and print run. Slap Fight was a rather old game by then, and a lot of Toaplan love had already been given to the system with the likes of Truxton, Twin Cobra and Zero Wing. And since the game came out in very low quantities, it soon became one of the most expensive and sought after cartridges in the years that followed. The Mega Drive port, however, has a particularly interesting feature: an arrange mode that's even more engaging than the arcade original. That's the reason behind the Slap Fight MD title.

A quick full credit of the Mega Drive version of Slap Fight
(courtesy of YouTube user Jorge Miashike)

Simplicity is the name of the game in vanilla Slap Fight. By default, button B provides rapid shot and button A acts as a "weapon select", as the options have it. Button B, in fact, activates the highlighted upgrade in the vertical weapon away, exactly as you'd do in any Gradius. The active slot cycles by taking yellow stars left behind by specific enemies, and the upgrades include speed-up, shot, side, wing, bomb, laser, homing missile and shield. Shot, bomb, laser and homing missile are weapon types and self-excludent. Side is the ability of firing short-range side shots to take care of the ship's flanks. The shield is self-explanatory, lasting a certain amount of time while giving you protection against three hits. As for wing, it upgrades the ship's firepower but also laterally increases its hitbox in the process. Wings can be destroyed by enemy fire, but up to three of them can be equipped at any given time. Activating any weapon type or the wing power-up will move the ship close to the middle of the screen and award the player a few seconds of full invincibility.

Kinda like in Xevious, stage progression is seamless, yet it's very clear that one loop of Slap Fight has three bosses, which appear in areas 17, 40 and 80. This means a full loop is made of 80 contiguous sections. It's not a long one, but the difficulty slowly ramps up as you get through the game again and again. Life extends are given with 30.000 and for every 100.000 points you score after that. A single extra life is also granted when you defeat the second boss, as well as in other obscure circumstances that aren't really important unless you're adamant in learning this and many other intricacies about the game. Here's a great source for that.

Speaking of secrets, the only one I used extensively was the one for the starting speed-up (press ↗ with A + B when you're spawned, also valid for the very start of the game). All weapons also have specific dynamic scoring secrets that appear when you use them extensively: the space invaders character for shot, growing plants and flowers for bomb/laser and metallic tokens for the homing shot. Upon starting the game and refraining from shooting completely, when you die you'll reappear fully powered in a further area ahead with up to 240.000 points in the bag (there is a certain point where it's not advantageous anymore to keep on going).

One final element about the regular game is the appearance of an invincible little ship that bounces around giving you random help against the enemies, a phenomenon that happens only when you're using the shot weapon type. It's kinda like the helper bit seen in the Mega Drive version of Hellfire. An obscure detail that's worth mentioning is the duration of the shield function, which is actually determined by one of the settings in the options.

Second boss

And then there's Slap Fight MD, which some consider to be the real meat on the bone of the Mega Drive port. By activating this mode in the options, you'll play a darker and marginally harder mode that rearranges and improves enemy sprites, adding different bosses and a new function for button C: the typhoon bomber. Whenever you have at least one wing equipped it's possible to sacrifice it for a spinning powerful blast that leaves the ship in its default size afterwards. Note that in Slap Fight MD you already start the game with one wing attached, that's why the ship is bigger there. Four bosses are fought in areas 15, 57, 73 and 83, with the full loop being just slightly longer than the original one.

Of special importance is the energetic new Gradius-like soundtrack of Slap Fight MD, composed by none other than Yuzo Koshiro, the man behind the music from Streets of Rage and The Revenge of Shinobi. I don't know about specifics, but with the exception of the pacifist trick of the regular game all other main secrets mentioned above also work in this arrange version. And a very nice bonus regardless of the mode being played is the soft-reset function provided by pressing A+B+C + START, a feature that would only become usual in the Sega Saturn era.

I admit I had more fun with this game than I had anticipated, mostly because I was never really fond of the visuals inspired by Xevious. It's extremely interesting to notice some embrionary elements in this game that would evolve into several different shmups in the Toaplan portfolio, such as V-V / Grindstormer and Truxton, both in terms of gameplay and music. Truxton, in particular, owes a lot to Slap Fight, as hinted by the terrains filled with moving turrets and bosses that fly over moving sections, timing out if you take too long to beat them.

Below are my best results for regular Slap Fight (4th loop, area 4-59) and Slap Fight MD, (3rd loop, area 3-44), playing in the Normal difficulty. From what I could gather, the port is very faithful to the arcade game, even including an arranged version of the original soundtrack.

TwinBee Da!! (PSP)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
2 Difficulty levels
5 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Konami
Published by Konami in 2007

Originally released for the Japanese Game Boy handheld in 1990, TwinBee Da!! has the distinction of being the 4th chapter of the long running bell-juggling franchise by Konami. Besides an European port that appeared a few years later with the title Pop'n TwinBee (not to be confused with the homonymous Super Famicom chapter), the game was revamped into a full-blown colored version included in the TwinBee Portable compilation that came out for the PSP in 2007. Also known as the "Powered Up Arranged Edition", the PSP entry comes with a little bit more than the color makeover you'd expect for a monochromatic older and rather obscure video game.

The first aspect that pops to mind when booting up TwinBee Da!! is how good it looks. The arcade-quality cute'em up graphics are nothing short of awesome, as is the music featuring arrangements of tracks from previous games led by well-known composer Manabu Namiki. Some sources cite the involvement of M2, yet I could not confirm that anywhere from the in-game information. The only feature that did not reach the heights of an arcade entry is the challenge, which is of course understandable. On the other hand, since the game does not loop the carrot on the stick here is the possibility of maximizing your score throughout five stages.

Pink windmills over fluffy clouds

Basic gameplay is very similar to other chapters of the franchise. One button is used to shoot (with native autofire) and another to drop ground bombs (can be set to autofire if desired). By shooting at clouds you release bells whose color can be changed if you continue shooting at them. Mainly colored yellow, they will eventually cycle through blue (speed-up), white (double shot), green (trailing options) and red (shield barrier). If you hit them bells for too long they eventually get wrecked and fall down the screen for good in the form of a deadly bug.

Besides bells, there are also ground items to be collected. Most of them are fruit that give you some points, but you can also come across a star (clears the screen of airborne enemies and bullets), a milk bottle (extra life) and a candy (3-way shot). Collecting the candy a second time makes the character shoots an extra candyball that bounces around the screen. Note that you can't have the double shot (white bell) and the 3-way shot (candy) at the same time, so collecting one disables the other. The same happens with the green and the red bells, which means you are forced to choose between the options or the shield. All items collected are shown in a large status bar on the left side of the screen.

A staple of the series, the ambulance item also returns. If both your arms get shot (the ones that drop the ground bombs), the ambulance will cruise the screen for you to recover them. Miss it and you won't be able to drop bombs for the remainder of the level, being granted new arms only when the next level starts. Also note that the ambulance item appears only once per stage.

Each yellow bell collected in succession without any of them falling off the screen increases in value until maxing out at 10.000 points, in what represents the main source of score for those who shoot for the best possible performance. In a nutshell, it's the same mechanic that's present in every TwinBee game or variation thereof, such as the ones from the Parodius franchise. Juggling bells for points can be spoiled by greed as usual, but TwinBee Da!! behaves a little differently from the other games in the series. For example, it takes several shots to make a bell change its color instead of just one. And instead of disappearing from the color cycle, all bell colors keep coming even if their function is maxed out. Each surplus bell collected is worth 10.000 points.

A brief look into how TwinBee Da!! looks on the PSP
(courtesy of YouTube user Now Loading Please Wait)

With only five stages, TwinBee Da!! is quite a short game. Instead of parading in their own level, the boss rush lifted from TwinBee appears right at the end of the 4th stage, meaning the PSP version is one stage shorter than the Game Boy original. The gameplay in general is very easy to grasp yet the game becomes a royal mess by the time you reach the 4th stage. There's so much going on by then that it's virtually impossible to keep a steady combo of yellow bells, with absolutely no slowdown to be seen anywhere. Hint: since it takes three blue bells to max out the flying speed and maximum speed isn't that fast, it's advisable to just max it out as quickly as possible.

There are other differences between TwinBee Da!! and the original Game Boy title, such as the absence of the Queen Bee boss, the lack of the stage select feature at the start of the credit, the reordering of some boss themes and the fact that it's 1-player only. Does the eye candy compensate for that? I guess in the end it depends if you're a die hard Game Boy fan. For me it was just another basic diversion to be had during a short flight. It's also a rather easy one, especially for those who have some knowledge of other games in the series.

My best 1CC score is shown below, playing in the Normal difficulty. A charming collection in its own right, the TwinBee Portable disc has elementary features such as button remapping and saving.