Twinkle Star Sprites

About Twinkle Star Sprites

Twinkle Star Sprites (1996) is ADK's last Neo Geo game, a competitive shoot 'em up in which two players on side-by-side screens chain enemy kills to send attacks into each other's field.

Twinkle Star Sprites in Depth

Each player has a separate vertically scrolling field, divided by a bar, and shoots enemy formations arriving from the top. Destroying them in chains sends fireballs into the opponent's field. Shooting an incoming fireball enough times reflects it back as a glowing Reverse Attack, reflecting those summons indestructible Extra Attacks, and reflecting many at once can summon a boss, with the extra and boss attacks varying by character. Destroying one enemy in a formation and the rest with a combo scores a Perfect, which speeds up attacks and the countdown to special formations. A power gauge with three levels fires a character's charge shot, and at higher levels also launches Extra Attacks or a Boss Attack. When a countdown runs out, a special formation or a blue orb appears, and destroying the orb in a chain grants a few seconds of Fever with faster, more plentiful attacks.

Both players have five life points. Colliding with an enemy costs one but cannot kill; at the last point it halves it and stuns the player. Being hit by an attack or a boss costs three, and the opponent regains life whenever the player takes damage. If a round lasts over 102 seconds, or both players fail to make combos for too long, a Death enemy appears that kills on contact and can be volleyed to the other side.

Making Twinkle Star Sprites

ADK developed Twinkle Star Sprites as its last Neo Geo production, and SNK released it in arcades in 1996, ported it to the Neo Geo AES in January 1997 and to the Neo Geo CD that February. Game Machine listed it as the fourteenth most popular arcade game in Japan in its 1 January 1997 issue. Critics were mixed, but fans were enthusiastic. AllGame's Kyle Knight called it "a refreshingly innovative title that manages to pull its seemingly incompatible elements together brilliantly" while noting slowdown, and IGN liked the Dreamcast version's extra options and multiplayer but found its graphics low-resolution and its single-player modes thin. It was included in the Japanese PlayStation 2 compilation ADK Damashii in 2008 and later re-released by Hamster and on PC.