Twin Hawk (aka Daisenpu in Japan) is basically Tiger-Heli with a plane instead of a chopper. Like Tiger-Heli all the foes are ground and water based vehicles. No planes of choppers in sight. What sets this one apart from Tiger-Heli is you can call a squad of planes to aid you whenever you are in trouble. Press the call button again and all of your planes will go kamikaze, crashing into the strong enemy vehicle you are targeting. You only have one type of gun throughout the game. Destroy orange trucks, and you will see P icons bounce off the screen, which will gradually upgrade your weapon with a wider range. Also, you’ll see H icons, which gives you another squad of planes to call. Even 1ups will appear, but they are extremely rare.
For a game released back in 1989 the pixel art is absolutely gorgeous. There is a lot of detail in the backgrounds and the planes, tanks, boats, and explosions are well animated. The sound department IMHO
leaves much to be desired. After hearing the stellar music from previous Toaplan games like Truxton, Hellfire, Zero Wing, Fire Shark, I find the music in Twin Hawk kinda bland. I consider this one the “worst” of the 4 games here, but honestly the game is pretty good. It just is not in the same league as the 3 other games I am about to discuss.
At long last, we got the elusive Truxton II! (aka Tatsujin-Oh in Japan). I don’t think this one ever made it to North American arcades back in 1992, but as far as I can tell, it was only released in Japan and parts of Europe and Asia. For many years, the only home port was exclusively on the FM Towns line of computers and the FM Towns Marty in Japan. It is something of a holy grail to many shmup collectors.
If you think the original Truxton was hard enough, boy, you are in for a ride here. Truxton II is similar to the first game, but now we have 2 player co-op and rapid fire by default! It is a longer game too, with about 7 extremely lengthy stages. A complete playthrough of this one can last more than an hour! For a shmup that is pretty long.
Like the original Truxton there are 3 colored power ups. Red gives you 6 way napalms, Blue gives you a homing laser and Green gives you a spread shot. Keep collecting the power up of the same color and your guns will get stronger instantly. There are no more P icons like in the original, but S icons as usual speeds up your ship. You also can reveal hidden Pipurus that weird California Raisin look alike character (Toaplan’s mascot) and it awards you with multiple power ups. Additionally, if you are maxed out with your guns or speed collecting power ups will award you 5000 pts each, while finding B icons give you those awesome looking skull bombs.
Unlike the original Truxton you don’t have to be near an enemy to do any damage. The explosion scrolls upwards to the top of the screen, which is not really an ideal way to defeat the ridiculously hard bosses, but good to use if you are overwhelmed by the amount of enemy projectiles during the game. The graphics are extremely beautiful, with peak Toaplan sprite art here. The music, while not as catchy as the original Truxton, is also well done.
Truxton II is in my opinion a very worthy sequel. It is extremely hard, so don’t think you’ll master this one overnight. You will be playing this for days, months to get any good at it.
Tatsujin-Oh roughly translates to “King of Expert” after all.
Now we get to Grind Stormer (aka V-Five). This here is actually the spiritual follow up to 1986’s Slap Fight and boy what an upgrade this one has over the original. Everything got an extreme overhaul. This game is an interesting one because depending on the region the gameplay is different.
Grind Stormer, the international version has a bomb stock, while the Japanese version (V-Five) has the same Gradius style power up system Slap Fight had. In Grind Stormer you simply collect power up capsules to gain different guns, upgrades, bombs., while in V-Five you collect gems that highlight what power up you can choose on that bar at the bottom of the screen.
Your weapons include your normal “shot” power up. (Spread your pods and you’ll have a wide shot. Move the pods in front of your ship and you will fire a enormous beam). You also get “missile” with pods that follow you around like the options in Gradius. “Search” makes your pods lock onto enemies while you fire. Its the weakest weapon, but it is very useful on certain bosses and if you want to wipe out popcorn enemies quickly. “Power” upgrades your ship’s current weapon. “Shield” which is not present in Grind Stormer gives you a force field that will have your ship take an extra hit.
The graphics here are again spectacular peak Toaplan sprite work and the soundtrack is great too. Grind Stormer / V-Five is definitely a lot of fun no matter which version of the game you choose.
Personally I prefer the Japanese rom, but I’m sure there are others that prefer the version with the Truxton style power ups and bombs.
Finally, let’s talk about Dogyuun. Easily the most obscure game in this collection here, this was trapped in foreign arcades since 1992, with not one home console release. Dogyuun is definitely something
special., as seen when you start the game, and you are treated with an intro with a huge cool yellow enemy mech jumping out of the screen.
Dogyuun is most definitely designed for co-op play. The player 1 and 2 ships can combine together to fire the most powerful beams and each ship has that Zero Wing magnetic beam that sucks in small enemies from behind. You get colored weapons, with Blue as your regular laser beam, Green as the rapid laser, Red as the search laser and Pink as the homing laser. You also get armor pieces that either give you the ability to dash or to use as a bomb.
Like Truxton II this one is a long playthrough. 10 stages in total with a nice little surprise at the end of the game which I will not spoil. This one is an absolute coin eater, so try to get a pal to play this one with you to get the maximum enjoyment. If you play this solo. those checkpoints are BRUTAL. If you even lose once good luck advancing because your default weapon despite looking cool as hell is total crap.
Verdict? Great co-op game. Mid as a single player game.
As usual with all of Bitwave’s ports, you get a bunch of video options. You can pick a few different borders or frames, change the screen resolution, play with scanline or smoothing filters, play in TATE mode. You can change the region of the game and have the ability to use save states or rewind. Each game has a practice mode that is absolutely great for those who are playing these shooters for the first time because you will definitely need that.
One thing I am happy to report is there is very minimal input lag in each of these games. I tried Bitwave’s Truxton II, and then I played the Sega Astro City Mini V version, and I definitely noticed a HUGE difference. The controls are much better on the Steam version.
Overall, if you love shmups at all, getting these games is an absolute no-brainer. If you could only try one game out of all these, I’d pick either Truxton II or Grind Stormer. Both are insanely good. Big thanks to Bitwave Games for giving us great emulated versions of these lost arcade classics.
*A review code was given by the publisher for the purpose of this review
David Medina is a hardcore gamer and Japanese import collector owning dozens of systems and games from Famicom to Nintendo Switch. He has an active YouTube channel called "The Karnov Jr Show" and posts retro gaming content there weekly showing off collections, random store tours, and gameplay clips.