The game control consists of an eight-way joystick and two buttons: one for shooting enemies in the air and the other for dropping bombs to ground enemies (similarly to Xevious). The player takes control of a cartoon-like anthropomorphic spacecraft, with Player 1 taking control of TwinBee, the titular ship, while Player 2 controls WinBee. TwinBee can be played by up to 2-players simultaneously. Various TwinBee sequels were released for the arcade and home console markets following the original game, some which spawned audio drama and anime adaptations in Japan. A mobile phone version was released for i-mode Japan phones in 2003 with edited graphics. The original arcade game was released outside Japan for the first time in the Nintendo DS compilation Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits. TwinBee was ported to the Family Computer and MSX in 1986 and has been included in numerous compilations released in later years. It was the first game to run on Konami's Bubble System hardware. Along with Sega's Fantasy Zone, released a year later, TwinBee is credited as an early archetype of the " cute 'em up" type in its genre. TwinBee ( ツインビー, TsuinBī) is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up game originally released by Konami as an arcade game in 1985 in Japan.