Twinkle Star Sprites

Alright, today's review is going to be the game Twinkle Star Sprites.  This is an arcade game from the mid 90's, but I've only played the Dreamcast port, so that's what I'm going to be talking about. 

This is a competitive game that mixes top down shooter and puzzle games.  Each player (the game is either you vs. the computer, or 2 player versus), gets half of the screen while various patterns of enemies come down the screen.  When you kill an enemy, it explodes, and any nearby enemies get hurt and can explode creating a combo attack.  The higher the combo, the stronger the attack you send towards your enemy.  The basic attack is a small fireball, but with bigger combos, you can send your character's unique attack, or even launch a devastating boss attack. 

The small fireballs can be shot at, sending them back at the enemy.  Each character also gets a charge attack, and a couple bombs.  The more combos you get, the more a meter at the bottom of the screen charges up.  At the first level it's just the basic charge attack.  At the second level, it depletes the bar, but sends several of the character's unique medium attacks at the other player, and if charged all the way, you can release a boss attack.

The game has 3 basic modes: story mode, vs. computer, and player vs. player.  The gameplay is all basically the same.  In story mode you play as the main character Load Ran, while in the other modes you can chose your character.

It's a very simple game, but very fun and addicting when played with some friends.  If you have a Dreamcast, I'd highly recommend finding a copy.  I don't think it's very common, and might be hard to find, but if you own a Dreamcast, I'm sure you know ways around that.  ;)