Breather Boss: The bosses of stage 3, T-C3 Samidalen #EB and T-C4 Samidalen #YS, are considerably easier than others, with their sole gimmick simply consisting of firing aimed streams of bullets with virtually no spread to their patterns. As long as you dodge slowly, defeating them is not terribly difficult.
Demonic Spiders: Any regular enemies that trigger the "DANGER" alert in the Kyukyoku Tiger Heli rerelease's Enemy Alert gadget is most certainly this, but to be more specific:
Tanks are one of the most feared regular enemy in the game, due to their tendency to snipe you from the other side of the screen the moment you scroll them into view. A few stages even have tanks from behind, which is a "DANGER" on the Enemy Alert rather than just a "CAUTION" for the tanks from the sides. Think you're safe in Stages 2, 4, 7, and 9, where you spend most of the stage over the sea? Think again, because those stages introduce gunboats that serve as replacements for tanks, and yes some of the boats come up from behind too!
Starting with stage 4, one type of enemy you'll encounter is a high-speed bomber that descends rapidly down the screen and fires a stream of bullets from you. Destroying it will release an item, but if you haven't powered up your weapon, good luck with that.
First Installment Wins: While the sequel is generally not considered a terrible game, the first game is much more iconic due to being made in Toaplan's prime and being ported to a variety of platforms, while Twin Cobra II was released by a lesser-known company that spawned from Toaplan's collapse and only received a port for the Sega Saturn, a platform that didn't do so hot compared to the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64.
Goddamned Bats: Stage 3 has the Type-C variant of the basic attack helicopter, which likes to swoop down but then juke to the side to avoid your shots. Stage 5's Type-E variant is similar in behavior.
It's Hard, So It Sucks!: When the game was rereleased as part of Kyūkyoku Tiger Heli, it received a lot of criticism for being brutally difficult and less fair compared to the likes of more modern Bullet Hell gamesnote this is a lot more plausible than one may think, as while bullet hell games rely on puzzle-like patterns that the player must navigate, classic Toaplan games often pile on the difficulty with fast aimed bullets, ship-sized hitboxes rather than modern microscopic ones, enemies that come from all angles including from behind, checkpoints instead of instant respawn, and taking away all of the player's powerups upon death, demonstrating that the game has not aged well in many shmup fans' eyes. Coupled with the other game Tiger Heli being relatively primitive, Kyūkyoku Tiger Heli is perhaps the most polarizing M2 ShotTriggers release to date.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Kyūkyoku Tiger Heli, despite being veryPolished Ports of this game and Tiger-Heli, gets flak for not being as feature-rich as previous M2 ShotTriggers ports, lacking arrange soundtracks and Arrange Modes. Granted, ESP Ra.De. Psi from two years prior and Aleste Collection also don't have new arrange modes, but Psi is still well-received for its Drive Waves 2019 arrange soundtrack and Aleste Collection is known for having GG Aleste 3, a.k.a. "that Game Gear game that was released in 2020", while Kyūkyoku Tiger Heli is seen as an even more "minimum effort" package than those two games.
The FM Towns version is known for not only being a faithful recreation of the arcade original, but having an absolutely bangin'arrange soundtrack that brings the music up to a blood-pumping 32-bit feel. To the disappointment of some fans, it was not among the versions included in Kyūkyoku Tiger Heli.
Kyūkyoku Tiger Heli once again demonstrates M2 at their finest. To elaborate:
You get five versions of Twin Cobra: The original Kyūkyoku Tiger, a Super Easy mode that not only dials down difficulty elements but also adds a variety of Anti-Frustration Features, the American Twin Cobra build, a 2-player build based off of Kyūkyoku Tiger rather than Twin Cobra, and a Custom mode that lets you fine-tune the game to your taste.
You can get the NES, Genesis, and PC Engine versions, as well as the US-region variants of the former two, as part of paid DLC.
Kyūkyoku Tiger, as well as its Super Easy and Custom variants, all have M2's signature M2 Gadgets to assist players with some of the game's Fake Difficulty elements, such as a map that not only shows stage progress but also the locations of certain items like stars and 1-Up tokens, a meter showing the cycle through the four weapons, and an Enemy Alert gadget that warns you of enemies likely to ambush you.
Kyūkyoku Tiger, along with Tiger Heli in the same package, features an elaborate Arcade Challenge mode that's absolutely perfect for practicing, letting you choose the exact area to start at, whether to play the next four areas or all the way to the end of the stage, what weapon and weapon power you want, and even which loop you want, all the way up to the 16th if you're extremely skilled (or masochistic).
Boss timers have been added so that score attackers no longer have to sit at boss fights forever to get the best scores, enabling a real challenge for score-minded players.
Whereas Tiger Heli has four stages and takes about 15 minutes per loop (assuming no deaths), Twin Cobra has ten stage and 45 minutes per loop.
There is a wider variety of enemies, including helicopers with all manners of movement patterns and high-speed bombers, and this game now features boss fights.
The screen can now scroll left and right, unlike the original...but this also makes it more likely that an offscreen enemy can snipe you when you least expect it.
While this game does feature a Power-Up system, you're expected to take full advantage of it as without it, all you have for your main weapon is a weak forward-fire weapon.
Item tokens now circle the middle of the screen instead of just slowly descending to the bottom, forcing you to move up the screen and possibly into danger to power up your ship, change weapons, and replenish your bombs.
That One Boss: The boss of Stage 7, T-G95 Grind Gear, a pair of units joined together by a bridge. It fires a fast and constant barrage of bullets, and if you destroy the bridge to separate the units it becomes even more difficult to dodge their fire. Most players just choose to time it out, and there's even a PSN trophy in the PS4 version for doing so without inflicting any damage to the boss.
Like prior M2STG ports of vertical-orientation games, several M2 Gadgets in the Kyūkyoku Tiger Heli version are either watered down or removed if running the game in vertical monitor mode. Unfortunately, one of the removed gadgets is the Enemy Alert gadget that informs players of possible ambushes from enemies.
None of the Gadgets are available in the Twin Cobra and 2P Kyukyoku Tiger builds (the latter being just a logo-swap variant of the former), to the disappointment of those who prefer these versions. They're also not available in the console ports, but that can be forgiven due to those ports having entirely different coding.
gets you pumped up for the long 10-stage mission ahead of you.