The Saturn Twinbee is pretty good. I remember Stinger on NES, my friend had it back in like 89 or something, and it was f*cking awful. I use to give him shit about playing Stinger while I was playing R-Type on Master System, good times.
Stinger wasn't that bad, but it was tough. You, my friend, didn't have the balls to accept the challenge of Stinger!
I thought the boss designs were the highlight of Stinger: huge cute, funny bosses... the Bonk / Zonk games always reminded of Stinger in this regard (there are other games, as well, but I'm sticking to the TG-16 universe).
Plus, Stinger pioneered (?) (OK, shoot-em-up historians should correct me if I'm wrong) the alternating vertical - horizontal stage progression. At the very least, it set a precedent (?) internally, at Konami, and paved the way for Lifeforce (NES).
But who cares? This was the first cute-em-up I ever played and it had some charm (I always liked how your partner could grab you soul / ghost when you die), plus it was a challenging game.
GUTS, you know that I like to react harshly to some of your comments

. But seriously, your ass was handed to you by flying coat hangers and a slice of pizza! How emmasculating is that? Even mastering R-Type SMS can't make up for it!

/drama