Year:1997
Developer:ADK
System: Neo-Geo/Dreamcast/Saturn
Genre: Puzzle/ Shmup.
Sometimes a game comes along that is so goddamn amazing that I am baffled. After playing it I am left wondering "how did I exist without playing this game?". I wanted to elaborate on why it is so amazing.
Story:
Ummm....something about playing as a girl named Load Ran who is a witch or something and she has to fight this vampire named Mevious and rescue her mom who has huge tits and enjoys munching sweet tacos. Also something about stars and shit. Seriously, why are stars such a focal point of games?
Gameplay:
This game is unique in that it combines two very different genres, puzzles and shmups. But does it succeed?
YES! YES! OH GOD YES!
The game is on a vertically scrolling plane and you move your character around and shoot balloons or clouds or boxes or birds or whatever, I will just refer to them as clouds. They wiggle around and fly in patterns, that is where the puzzle elements come in. The patterns they fly in can be exploded into chains. Some targets have bubbles around them, they will fuck up the chain unless they are popped before exploding them. The chain follows a big cloud with a trail of little clouds behind them, to get a Perfect you have to pop the biggest one first, which will pop all of them and send a larger amount of little fireballs at your opponent.
Fireballs are this games equivalent of the garbage blocks found in most VS puzzle games. What I think is cool is that you can counter the fireballs, sending them back to the other player. HA-HA, fucker! Eat it!
right?
wrong!
they can counter your counter attack, sending some sort of special attack to your side of the screen, either exploding rabbits, dragons, pigs, robot fists, whatever.
You every so often you can shoot a blue circle with a star in it to go into a sort of berserker mode, everything you pop sends fireballs at your opponent. This can lead to some insane shootouts, they separate the men from the boys. You think "oh hey, this isn't so tough OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS WAVE OF PUNISHMENT FLOWING OVER ME!?!?" and you're dead.
This game appears to be simple on the surface but once you learn the game a little it becomes very very deep. I had a zen moment when I was learning the game. The computer was kicking my ass over and over and almost instantly I understood the game.
TSS is an absolute blast in the gameplay department, it has a unique way to play that I have never seen in another game. Everything is top notch.
Graphics:
The graphics are really bright, really adorable and I think I got a cavity from how sweet everything is. Sometimes this bothers me, sometimes it doesn't. When I am in an intense match I don't even notice the graphics. Overall it looks really nice, everything is crisp and cute and it can be a nice change from the normal gloomy hard sci-fi that you see in most shmups. B+
Sound:
The music is really upbeat and fun. I like a lot of the stage themes, especially the music in story mode when you meet the boss characters and the last few tracks of story mode, especially Mevious and Memory, really energetic songs. The game features voice samples for all the characters, but the Saturn version has full voice acting. I like the sound effects, its really satisfying to hear the chains of enemies pop in a sequence. Yeah, I'm not much of a sound buff so it is hard to elaborate on something other than "YUH I LIKE DIS THING DUR HUR". Sorry about that. A-
Overall:
Overall this game is amazing, ADK really went all out to make the best game possible. The graphics are nice, the music is catchy and most importantly, the gameplay is perfect. Yes, perfect. The game is so addicting, exciting and unique that I am having difficulty focusing on writing this. I want to play it right now! If you are a fan of puzzle games, shooters or fun in general you NEED to play this game. I don't care how you get the game, just get it. It is an essential Neo-Geo game and one of my all time favorites. Once you scratch it's sugary sweet surface you will find the amazingness located within.
I give Twinklestar Sprites 10 sweet tacos out of 10.