Tonight’s Sunday Night Shmup is Kyukyouku Tiger for PC Engine. An excellent port of Toaplan’s arcade helicopter shooter, this game is tough as nails and gritty yet surprisingly colorful with a nice array of spreadshots, lasers and even a homing shot not to mention a satisfying shockwave bomb that feels not too unlike the bomb from Raiden which makes one actually wonder if Seibu perhaps took some notes from this game when crafting their masterpiece as the overall presentation is quite similar. This is one of my favorite PC Engine arcade ports for sure and great fun if you’re looking for a classic Toaplan shooter to play at home and own a system in the PCE family or a U.S. TG-16 related system with a Hucard region mod.
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Is Tiger-Heli on NES a port of that game, or different? One of my good friends growing up had it and we’d play it all the time (but we’re still terrible at it lol).
Tiger Heli is a different game in Toaplan’s “helicopter series.” Kyukyouku Tiger is also known as Twin Cobra and came after.
Edit: What @raskulous said 
I have the NES cart for Tiger Heli and yeah, it’s really unforgiving. 
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Twin Cobra / Kyukyoku Tiger is a spiritual sequel to Tiger Heli.
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I ended up grabbing Rival Megagun on PS4 and I’m really enjoying it. If anyone wants to play online hit me up !
I was going to ask if this was better than the Sega Genesis version of the game, and then it occurred to me I should check if THE PORTS HAVE BATTLED?! Answer: They have! @Yakumo
Seems like they’re similar. Each has its upside. I loved this game in arcades and I still love playing it at home. It’s definitely one of the best pure shooters before the bullet hell became a thing.
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It’s on Steam. Released in 2016. So someone out there has the power to release it on modern hardware.
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I’ll also note that Twin Cobra II totally escaped notice by me, even on Saturn!, somehow. That is a cool looking game. I love the use of scaling on the first level to dive into the waterway. That’s hot! I’m not sure I’m up for the $250 it commands on eBay, but I’m damn sure interested in it.
Ah cool. I still don’t use Steam so didn’t know. Was said by someone on either ResetEra last year or GAF before it imploded, was obviously erroneous, thanks for the info.
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I got mine yesterday as well! I did not get it out of the box. Also picked up some Switch joycon stick caps that a friend said really help with making those small sticks more comfortable.
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I ordered one but it hasn’t arrived yet.
So when you guys use the joycon to play shmups, do you use the directional buttons or the analogue stick?
For me it kind of depends on what I’m feeling and how the game handles them. I really wish we had something with a d-pad, that worked wirelessly. I have the hori joypad and its a good d-pad but lack of wireless support sucks. I also wish the switch had a higher polling rate on its USB ports.
Since I got the Skull nubs that extend the height of the stick, I am now using the stick and not the “d-pad”. It’s much better that way.
I would prefer a proper Nintendo d-pad.
I always use the analog stick when playing shmups with a Joycon (when I’m playing in tabletop TATE mod with my Horii stand, still don’t have a Flip Grip) which I have always found comfortable, to me it just feels like I’m using a “mini arcade stick.” Directional buttons work fine as well but I’m too used to using the analog stick now that they feel pointless.
Twinkle Star Sprites releases on Switch and XB1 today! (PS4 Dec 11th)
Speak of the devil! Awesome news!!!
I’ve always wanted the MVS version of this game. I hope it drops in price now (not holding my breath though).
The hamster ports are decent but I don’t like how they add interpolation when you enable scanlines. Not sure why they don’t have an option to turn off smoothing with scanlines on :-/
Still, this is very good news.
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