izigame.me

Mega Twins is a bit of the odd one out of Capcom's arcade library of the time, being not a fighter, not a shooter and not a beat'em up but rather a platformer clearly inspired by Sega's Wonder Boy franchise. It's a colorful and very pretty, if insipid, take on the genre.
The titular Mega Twins (or just one twin if you play solo, which is kind of anticlimactic) need to gather the powerful Gifts of the Earth, the Heavens and the Sea to defeat a powerful clown magician; in the Japanese version, they also save lots of bikini-clad babes at a rate that would make Duke Nukem embarassed (maybe that's why they purged this from the international release lol). The graphics are pretty amazing, with big, detailed sprites and vibrant colours to really sell the kiddies fantasy world. Some enemies and bosses have creative designs and the vibes are really fun. The soundtrack is not incredible, but it's pretty catchy and upbeat, fitting the game like a glove.
The main issue is that arcade platformers were never the most compelling games. Aside from exceptions like the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, which I'd say is more run 'n gun than anything, the platformer genre didn't really get to a particular level of sophistication, unlike beat 'em ups and shmups which eventually reached a peak that hasn't been quite replicated elsewhere. Hell, even console platformers got more refined and engaging very very quickly. In Mega Twins, there isn't much platforming at all really, you only have a basic jump and the obstacles are simplistic at best. It's kind of like playing a basic platformer through shoot 'em up levels: other design choices seem to corroborate this, such as your screen-clearing magic power which acts much like a bomb. But while in shooters the level is almost always just the backdrop and the action is the centerpiece, level design is integral in a platformer. This is mainly why the game feels more primitive than others of the era, though excellent-looking.
Aside from advancing, you whack enemies with a sword and occasionally face a boss. It's all pretty repetitive as there are no combos or anything like that, just a "power attack" executed with the proper timing and a shockwave when you have no magic left and don't attack for a bit. The action is not very exciting, also because the difficulty is relatively toothless. It can still suck a fair amount of quarters, but the game seems designed to slowly wear you down instead of properly f*cking you up.
This can all probably be explained with the hypotesis that the game was seeking out a new, younger demographic. Unfortunately, the result is a game that, while great to look at, isn't particularly fun or compelling.