Twin Cobra is a helicopter shoot-'em-up and the sequel to Toaplan's earlier arcade game Tiger-Heli. The game is known as Kyuukyoku Tiger in Japan, which continues the tradition set by Tiger-Heli to include the word Tiger in the title of each game in the series. Subsequent Japan-only sequels would use the same title, which roughly translates as "Ultimate Tiger". The helicopter comes equipped with a default forward-firing weapon that is able to hit both air and ground targets, as well as a finite supply of bombs which hit enemies in a wide radius for massive amounts of damage. The player can find power-ups by shooting down the relatively sturdy Chinook enemy choppers, which initially allow the player to upgrade their standard gun to include more shots, but will eventually allow them to pick up weapons that can fire in different patterns. These include a four-way shot that fires in the four cardinal directions and a spread shot that fires forwards and outwards in a cone. The player can also find additional bombs by destroying this type of enemy. At the end of each stage, and occasionally partway through, is a boss. These take considerably more damage than regular enemies and can fire a lot more projectiles as well.