Konami was once home to a number of storied video game franchises, but around the mid-2010s, they scaled back game production and left many of these to languish. These resulted in a number of spiritual successors, some created by their original staff – Castlevania had the Bloodstained games, Suikoden had Eiyuuden Chronicles, and Goemon had Bakeru. Now indie team PiXEL attempts to resurrect the TwinBee cute-em-up series, even featuring a few old school Konami team members.
The lively characters were designed by Shuujirou “Shuzilow.HA” Hamakawa (the artist for Detana TwinBee!!, plus some of the Parodius games), with the music was provided by Miki “MIKI-CHANG” Higashino (Gradius), Junya Nakano, and Yuji Takenouchi (both contributing to X-Men and Mystic Warriors). The background artwork and the bosses are also clearly inspired by DetanaI! TwinBee, complete with flying islands and steampunk machinery. The game itself was actually developed by Hidekuni Sasaki of PiXEL, who specialize in modern retro games, particularly shooters like Horgihugh and Xelan Force.
Even though it’s obviously trying to be a TwinBee revival, the actual game plays much more like a Compile shooter a la MUSHA. You can pick from three of the bounty sisters, each with their own ship and weaponry. You have both a regular forward-firing weapon along with a ship-specific subweapon, each of which are powered up individually by grabbing colored power-up capsules. You can also grab various bits that shoot in different directions. Additionally, a Hyper gauge builds up automatically. When filled, you can absorb a single hit, or you can use it to activate a character-specific attack. You can also temporarily call upon your other sisters to join in formation and supply additional firepower. As in TwinBee, two can play at the same time.
Certain large enemies will also drop money canisters. In a nod to TwinBee’s bell system, you repeatedly shoot these to cycle through currency values, aiming for the highest payout before they reset in value or fall off the screen. Money is separate from score and can be used to purchase additional subweapons before starting a new game. Each girl only starts with one subweapon, but three more can be unlocked through multiple plays. Funny specializes in various bubble attacks, Betty has bullets that shoot in different directions, and Dot attacks with different types of blades.
This is where the “bounty” part of the system comes in, but it’s also its weakest element, especially since you can’t switch characters or weapons mid-game. It probably would’ve made more sense to stick in shops between levels rather than having to restart to unlock more stuff or change your equipment. Additionally, unlike the Compile games it’s based on, you can’t fire both your regular and your subweapons at the same time. Some weapons work just fine on their own, especially Dot’s spinning blades attacks that flood the screen even on their weakest power level, but Funny’s bubble attacks are just too slow and weak on their own without being supplemented by your main weapon. At least your orbs fire regardless of which weapon you’re shooting.
Also, despite channeling the style of TwinBee, most of the enemies are just mechanical ships, so it doesn’t feel much like a cute-em-up despite the colorful visuals. The bosses are the most impressive foes, as most of them are large robots based on animals like lizards and insects. Dialogue bubbles pop up during gameplay, as your characters remark on the action or trade barbs with the bosses, but there’s not much else in the way of story or cutscenes. Even the post-level reward images are just static pictures compared to the little animated tidbits of the TwinBee games. Overall, the whole game just feels kind of flat. The backgrounds also suffer from noticeable shimmering, which is typically an artifact of porting older titles with different resolutions, but considering this game was made for modern hardware, it looks unusual. Plus, the character portraits look pixelated, like they were resized incorrectly.
Though it doesn’t quite the highs of the games it’s emulating, Bounty Sisters still has a decent classic shoot-em-up foundation, and it’s a pleasant nostalgia trip. The soundtrack hits all of the right notes too, particularly the distinctly Konami orchestral hit that appears in the boss theme. There’s a decent range of difficulty selections to cater to different skill levels, with easy mode offering unlimited continues.
Bounty Sisters had an extremely turbulent development history. It first began life as Steam Pilots, conceptualized by ex-Konami composer Motoaki Furukawa. It was successfully crowdfunded in 2019 and development handled by PiXEL. However, some money went missing and there a legal dispute between the two. Development stopped for a few years before PiXEL rebooted the project as Bounty Sisters, this time without Furukawa’s involvement. Shuzilow.HA provided artwork for both versions, though the characters are different between the two incarnations. Otherwise, the public screenshots of Steam Pilots show it to be otherwise pretty similar looking to the released game. So even though Bounty Sisters doesn’t quite have the production values of the arcade TwinBee games, it’s understandable given the circumstances. Plus, despite hiring all of the ex-Konami people, most of the actual game was developed by just a single person, so it’s a miracle that the game still turned out as well as it did.
Steam Pilots Screenshots and Artwork
Links
The Initial Crowdfunding Project on Makuake
The Second Crowdfunding Campaign on Makuake
