This article is part of our Japanese Obscurities feature. We put out a whole book about them, which is available as both a full color hardcover and a Kindle ebook from Amazon! If you’d like to see more of these features, please check out the book and if you enjoyed it, leave a five star review so we can do a follow up with even more interesting, offbeat, or historically important Japanese games!
Pop’n Tanks features miniature vehicles called Puchi-Tanks, similar to the type seen in games like Metal Slug and anime like Dominion Tank Police. Taking place in a colorful, anime inspired world, various characters and their unique tanks enter a tournament, engaging in duels for mechanical supremacy. The artwork is provided by Mine Yoshizaki, the artist behind the manga Sgt. Frog. The whole game has an upeat, blue skies vibe similar to Mega Man Legends and Detana! TwinBee!, the latter of which had a manga adaptation that was also illustrated by Yoshizaki.
Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Release: 09/29/89 Genre: Shooter
Stinger was a game I was not particularly fond of. Maybe I was too young to appreciate the nuance of juggling bells while fighting enemies or maybe I found it too wacky for my tastes. Either way I didn’t like it. I would later gain a new appreciation for the Twinbee series starting with Detana!! Twinbee. Before then…
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Detana!! TwinBee character designer Shujiro Hamakawa / 濱川 修二郎, AKA Shuzilow HA, just posted some new paintings on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ShuzilowHA/status/877015181544443904