Twinkle Star Sprites

Review Introduction:

What if I told you there is a game you may have never even heard of that combines hot and steamy shmup action with the sizzling head-to-head elements of Magical Drop? You'd probably say, “Hot diggity dog, Pimsbury! That's the wildest idea, and I wonder why this mashup isn't wildly successful!?”. You, Sir or Madame, will have to read the whole review to see if I even remember to answer THAT question!

When I first heard of Twinkle Star Sprites, it sounded BRILLIANT, and I absolutely knew I had to try this game. While this is far from the last game ADK made, it was one of their final Neo Geo titles and the culmination of the team's years of experience with the console.

Story:

Your mother, Queen Memory, is currently under mind control and not acting like herself. The evil man named Mevious and his minions are wreaking havoc in the magical kingdom you call home. In order to save the land, our hero, the girl known as LOAD RAN, runs away from home to find the Twinkle Star, a magical item rumored to grant wishes.

First of all, the main character is named LOAD RAN, and her rival is named REALLY TILL. I don't know if that's just terrible localization or if that is supposed to be a joke. There is an abundance of zany dialogue, with a absolutely scrumptious amount of spelling errors. Similar to a standard arcade fighting game, the story is told through character interactions between fights and during the endings. The dialogue is all super silly and meant to be comical, and ADK pulls it off rather well, even when it gets really weird.

The text flies by at an insane speed, and combined with the previous dialogue problems, I felt a little dyslexic trying to make sense of the story at times. I didn't understand what a character was trying to say or if I was misinterpreting jokes, but it was hilarious all the same. It's rather fun if you aren't expecting an epic tale from an arcade game, but there is also a lot more content than you would expect from a shmup.

Gameplay: 🕹️

As I stated in the introduction, the brilliant minds over at ADK mashed together a head-to-head puzzle fighter and a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up. You may be scratching your head a bit, wondering how the hell that works. It's actually easy enough to jump right into the game and figure it out, so don't worry about a steep learning curve. If you want to dive into the mechanics further you'll find there is a decent amount of depth.

We have your basic shot button and a bomb button. You can hold the shot button to charge an attack, and if you are playing on the AES, you can assign a third button to rapid fire shots, if you please. You also start with two bombs that provide temporary invulnerability, (like any good shmup should, yet some don't).

Each player has their own half of the screen, separated by a vertical border. Both characters can freely move about on their half and will be attacked by waves of enemies that appear on their side of the screen. Players and enemies cannot cross the barrier, but fireballs launched from combos will cross over to the other player's half. This is your main form of attacking the other player, as the enemies can only damage and slow down the players, and the standard enemies cannot kill a player.

When you kill an enemy, they leave behind a small explosion of sparkles that will damage any nearby enemy within the blast zone. Sparkle damage (my old stripper name) will cause a chain reaction that can wipe out several enemies in a row, creating “combos” that will fling a fireball to the opponent's screen. The bigger the chain combo, the more fireballs you'll send to the opponent's screen, unleashing the gosh darned cutest fiery destruction you have ever seen. The fireballs have LITTLE EYES! Did I tell you that? They might even be ghosts but I am not entirely sure.

The sparkles act a lot like the explosions in the classic arcade game Missile Command, and you can destroy a chain of enemies, thus creating a “sparkle wall” that kills more incoming enemies. There will also be a power-up that appears halfway through a level, making combos and attacks happen more often, which substantially increases the intensity.

If a player shoots the incoming fireballs enough, they will volley back to the other player, who can shoot them and send them right back as an “extra attack,” which transforms into a character-specific attack. The attack properties vary wildly between characters, with the spawn locations and attack patterns changing for everyone. Hitting the opponent with an attack will also give you some life back, creating a tug of war with the life gauges. When you score a large enough combo, you actually send a BOSS character to attack the other player momentarily, which is one of my favorite parts of the game.

You have quite the selection of characters to choose from, including four hidden characters accessible through cheat codes. Although all of the levels are always the same, and the enemy attack patterns are identical, learning HOW to use each character to score higher chains adds a lot of variety and spice to the game. The characters all have different speed and power stats with attacks unique to each one, and I rather enjoyed testing out each until I settled on a few that fit my play style.

All of this may sound confusing, but when you get down to it, you're really just killing cute stuff and dodging a lot. While the action is very chaotic and it's pretty fun, I feel like there isn't a lot of strategy when I play the single-player modes. If I could ever convince friends to play this game, I'd say, "Multiplayer is where the real fun, action, and strategy come into play". That will never happen, because this is a WINDJAMMERS house. It says so on my doormat.

Graphics: 👾

The graphics in Twinkle Star Sprites are so cute and sweet that I almost went into a diabetic coma. The artwork is superb, and it looks phenomenal in the cutscenes and the character select screen. If you are familiar with any head-to-head puzzle games, then you will feel right at home with the character designs, as most of them look like they were stolen directly from Magical Drop.

The in-game sprites look good, but the animation, backgrounds, and detail are standard fare for the shmup genre. The colors look a little washed out because there's an abundant use of bright pastel colors, which seems to be extremely common in these "cute" shoot 'em ups. The graphics are not in the same league as Pulstar, but that's just a matter of opinion; maybe you really like your games colored like an Easter egg, and in that case, this is absolutely your style.

The only real gripe I have with the graphics in TSS is that there is not enough visual distinction between the background, enemies, and player characters. When the action gets hectic, the visual clutter makes it too easy to lose track of your little guy in the candy-coated warzone. The dazzling explosions from defeated enemies and flashing flames volleying back and forth get extremely distracting. On the other hand, you won't be dodging bullet patterns in this game as you'll mostly be dodging ... colorful clams.

Sound: 🔊

The soundscape of Twinkle Star Sprites matches the art design perfectly. The music during cutscenes, menus, and title screens is all excessively cutesy, and most of the level themes are top-notch and VERY upbeat.

However, the Sky Stage theme... that song just JAMS. I love the theme so much that I usually die on purpose to extend my time on the level, and I wish the rest of the soundtrack was this good. This may be my favorite track from any ADK game, and it makes me want to get up, go outside, say hello to the neighbors, draw a puppy, write an uplifting and positive social media comment, or do whatever happy, mentally balanced people do. This song just shits sunshine.

Overall, I wouldn't say the sound is absolutely phenomenal, but it is completely competent. I think that is one of ADK's strong suits: They are great at being completely kinda above average.

Fun Factor:

Twinkle Star Sprites is an awesome game. While the single-player content is fun, I think the real draw is the multiplayer head-to-head battles. The combat is frantic and fast-paced, and the varied cast of characters can mix up the strategies quite a bit. I haven't convinced anyone to play yet, but boy, do I plan on it. Next time the religious folks come knocking on my door, they'll be in for a real treat.

The story mode and single player will get stale after a while, though, because you will essentially be playing the same stages and mostly fighting the same characters repeatedly. Unfortunately, the single-player content isn't as engaging as your standard shmup, and you may not find as much fun and value here as you would in a game like Last Resort, where you can spend weeks trying to complete the game on one credit or chasing high scores. Once you learn the basic patterns of the enemy waves, you can easily maximize combos, and only a handful of characters seem to excel at combos, so you may not find much reason to play as half of the cast.

I know I just said Twinkle Star Sprites is awesome, but without a second player, I grew tired of the game quickly. Good luck convincing a friend to play the game when there are so many other cool options on the Neo Geo. And it doesn't help that saying, "Do you want to play Twinkle Star Sprites?" sounds like some sort of romantic dialogue option from an RPG.

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Conclusion: 📊

Twinkle Star Sprites is hands down the best game I have played from ADK, yet is also simultaneously the game I will play the least. I just feel like there was a little more potential here, and I might even go as far as to say I don't really recommend the game, as TSS is such a niche title it might not appeal to many people. The game is really fun and interesting, but it may not appeal to hardcore shmup players or puzzle game players either. It's a great idea and reasonably well executed, but it doesn't feel deep enough to sink a lot of time into unless you can convince a friend or two to play often and I assume that's why this little sub-genre never picked up any steam.

Twinkle Star is a solid game, no doubt, and some people will absolutely enjoy every bit of it. Unfortunately, it may be more worthwhile to spend your money elsewhere, as you could buy every other ADK game for the price of a Twinkle Star Sprites cartridge. I would definitely recommend checking the game out on modern consoles or through emulation first instead of collecting the original game.

Twinkle Star Sprites is a game you need to try at least once, regardless of how indecisive I feel about the game!