TwinBee

TwinBee is Konami's cartoon shooter, and it is the one that proved the shoot-'em-up did not have to be a war game. Two players fly bee-shaped ships side by side, shooting clouds for bells, and the whole thing looks like a Saturday morning show.

The bell system is the mechanic. Shoot a floating cloud and a bell drops - and the colour it lands as depends on how many times you shoot it while it falls, which is a real decision rather than a bonus. Blue is speed, white is a twin shot, orange is a spread, green is a shield, and the wrong colour at the wrong moment is a genuine loss. Ground targets are hit with a separate bomb button, so you are managing air and ground threats with two different weapons. Two players can co-operate or, famously, accidentally shoot each other's bells, which is where most of the game's personality comes from. It spawned a long series in Japan and a media franchise that outlived the arcade original considerably.

• ▸Bell power-ups whose colour depends on how many times you shoot them
• ▸Separate air shot and ground bomb buttons
• ▸Two-player simultaneous play with shared screen and shared bells
• ▸Cartoon art direction unusual for a 1985 shooter