Thanks to Bitwave Games for the review code

Title:Twin Hawk
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $7.99
Release Date: 04/08/2024

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Story

In this four-stage shooter, you take control of a plane and set out to defeat the enemy across several nations! Per usual, the idea of a story is completely non-existent here.

Presentation

The typical Bitwave stuff applies yet again; screen filters, rotation, display options, I’ve said my piece over a dozen times now, and yet again the visual side of things works mostly fine. The game itself looks pretty sharp and has a more plain looking set of backgrounds than some other Toaplan titles, and the game just keeps going and going, with no boss stopping the scrolling action in the middle of the stages, leading to a well interconnected set of levels.

Oddly enough, I did notice a bit more shimmer here than prior Bitwave ports, and whether that’s due to the game’s constant scrolling or just some quirk with this particular port is a thing I feel I should mention, since shimmer is an effect I tend to barely notice in general, but when the image was displayed to the “Full” scale option, I immediately noticed it on the buildings in the take off sequence, even when using TATE mode with this scaling option. Turning the scaling to the pixel option fixes this, but considering I never noticed this flaw in any other Bitwave port, I am scratching my head as to how it happened here.

The music and sound, in its original form, sound great and starts off with a majestic takeoff theme, before going into some great use of percussion in the stages. With how long the levels are, it takes a lot to make a good song that won’t get tiring after the long trek through a stage, and Toaplan yet again does a great job at some memorable stage themes that don’t outstay their welcome. The shots are impactful and the sound effects are great.

Unfortunately, the typical Bitwave problems strike again, though not nearly as badly as with Truxton II thankfully. Still, you have the music seeming to sound OK at first, except for some of the percussion sounding off from a real PCB. Being that percussion instruments make up a good portion of what makes Twin Hawk sound so memorable, this can be pretty irritating if you’ve heard this game played on literally anything else. The sound effects are also very weird too, with some being a bit off-pitch, and the explosions sounding off from the PCB as well, leading to a bit of a farty-sounding experience that isn’t nearly as accurate as a port like this should be.

Not in the unbearable to listen category as some of the other Bitwave ports, but still in the “I swear there is something ever so slightly off about this song” that you’d know if you played the port of Flying Shark near launch. Like a lot of the Bitwave catalog, I do hope for some sort of fix to roll out soon, but yet again it is utterly ridiculous to have the same issues cropping up with the audio.

Gameplay

This is yet another Toaplan shooter with notable regional differences, and just like Twin Cobra, it mostly amounts to the addition of co-op and removal of checkpoints. Twin Hawk throws you right back into the action upon death, while Daisenpu is a more calculated, checkpoint-based game. Whichever way you play, the main goal of clearing the four stages is still the same, and you have your main shot and a summonable fleet of aircraft to help accomplish it.

Yes, unlike a lot of shooters from around the time Twin Hawk hit which had multiple weapons to make use of, this one goes back to a more simpler approach with just a singular weapon that upgrades and gets stronger as you pick up powerup icons from defeated foes. In lieu of a bomb, you can summon a squad of several aircraft to surround your plane, and they join you in firing at the enemies, leaving to a pretty massive wave of bullets if you summon them at just the right moment!

However, they too can take damage, and one hit will cause them to dive towards the nearest obstacle to take it out in the plane’s final moments, so eventually your squad will deplete until it’s just your main plane remaining. If you still need to clear out incoming projectiles, you can just press the deploy button twice before your backup shows up, which will convert all of your ally ships into a bomb that deals a lot of damage and erases all projectiles on screen. Still, I much preferred having allies around, and only used the bombs in an absolute emergency if I was about to get hit.

Both ways of defending yourself comes in handy not just for swarms of enemies, but the bigger, bulkier foes you take on as well, since Twin Hawk just keeps scrolling and scrolling, and there aren’t any traditional screen-stopping bosses as a result, which would make it pretty tough to even know if you cleared a stage, if the music didn’t change upon entering the next level; that’s how seamless this shooter manages to be!

You do deal with huge enemies near the end of the stage still, but they’ll show up later on as enemies that can impede your progress, leading to the game feeling like a weirdly length endurance round, and at least with the Daisenpu version’s checkpointing, I really do dig it, and find it to be pretty fun akin to Flying Shark. Twin Hawk is fun with a buddy or as a more easygoing way to get into the game, but since dying will throw you right back into a wave of enemies most of the time, sometimes this instant respawn can rapidly drain your lives.

Last but not least, are the Bitwave QOL features, and I have to admit, seeing how this is the only game of the four to include the auto-dodge technique, they really aren’t good. The extra HP toggle for your ship just flat out doesn’t work at all (at least to my best efforts to pulling it off, as I still only died in a single hit), the auto dodge is very stingy and fails basic dodges even in the first level, and the hitbox visibility continues to be a bit of an eyesore. You do have a handy option to enable enemy HP bars, but sometimes it bugs out and doesn’t go away properly when defeating an enemy, or even show up on certain enemies at all. All in all, these do help, but are very half-baked and I think the auto dodge being very off here is a good tell for why it didn’t make it into the other games in the volume. Oh well, at least the DIP options seem to work properly this time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Twin Hawk ended up being one of my favorite Toaplan shooters back on the Evercade, and while it is broken up into gargantuan levels that may seem intimidating, I found the checkpointing to be well done and very engaging in regards to the Daisenpu version of the game, making that version the best for scoring and a challenge by far.

However, the Twin Hawk version is a bit easier in spots due to the addition of co-op and instant respawning, but it can also be a lot meaner due to how instant respawning can just throw you right back into a nasty wave of enemies with little means to protect yourself, but in terms of wanting to see the ending with a friend, you’ll at least have a decent time if you wish to just credit feed through it.

Both versions have their own online leaderboards, and I definitely feel both versions have enough pros to be worth playing for shmup fans. Unfortunately, the repeated audio issues still sour my thoughts on this port ever so slightly, along with the borked QOL features, and this volume really shouldn’t have even launched with these minor inaccuracies to begin with, especially with that bizarre shimmering issue also being present. Wait it out for a patch, I say, and considering we are finally, finally done with every single toaplan Bitwave port, that is a remarkably depressing note I had to end the last several reviews on.

Seeing how a lot of these games really are awesome and I even discovered new favorites from this lineup, to have most of them just not fully polished up or outright broken really saddens me. Why Bitwave kept releasing waves with weird flaws or bugs or bad audio, I dunno. Maybe they’ll be fully fixed when you read this? Or maybe not. Whichever the case, proceed with caution…

I give Twin Hawk a 4 out of 10.