232 · Twin Eagle
Twin Eagle is a vertically scrolling arcade style shooter. You control a helicopter, and need to earn points by shooting or bombing the various (and numerous!) enemies you'll encounter. Planes, helicopters, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, foot soldiers, and more will all be trying to bring your mission to an abrupt end!
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SHOW NOTES
Longplay
Australia Version
Arcade Game
The Rescue Mission
Digitized Photos
Show notes
- Engage in the most challenging shoot-em-up action packed game yet for the Nintendo Entertainment System
- NES Longplay
- Introductions
- For folks familiar with the box art, there’s only 1 eagle on the cover.
- There’s a hidden subtitle on this game, it’s not on the box art, but is on the menu.
- Should be Avenge Joe’s Brother, right?
- Overview
- Vertical Helicopter SHMUP, certainly not our first go around.
- Gameplay
- The Twin Eagle controls
- Movement - Rather slow, hard to really circle around
- No enemy collision
- The coloring of the enemy bullets read well
- Fire bullets and drop bombs. We’ve seen it all before
- Bomb has an interesting quirk. On top of destroying every enemy on screen, it also destroys enemy bullets. A good way to get in a last second dodge.
- The Power-Ups can be shot at to rotate through a number of different Power-Ups. Thus collecting multiple of the same power up, levels up that particular upgrade. But collecting a new power up doesn’t reset the level up, just the type of power up. If you’re on level 3 Black S and collect Black P, it is now level 3 Black P
- The mission map - Tells you enemies you defeated and hostages you saved
- Hostages - Just points
- No bosses
- There is 2 player - but the 2nd player is not Joe’s Brother. Just an unnamed pilot. Or maybe his name is Buddy. They say You and a Buddy can avenge Joe’s death
- The claim that this is the most challenging
- Obvious Ad Speak
- We’ve had good challenging and we’ve had Nintendo Hard challenging beyond this
- This is the team that brought us Space Invaders. A classic, but is the appeal of that game just that they were first to do it? It doesn’t seem like they are innovating much here.
- The Twin Eagle controls
- Australia Unlicensed Version
- Home Entertainment Supplies in Australia would publish it there as an unlicensed NES game. This would end up in a dispute between HES and Nintendo
- Sequels and Spinoffs
- ARCADE GAME
- It was one of the first arcade to use extensive digital sampling, from digitized photos to a digitized soundtrack.
- And let me tell you, none of it holds up because of that. Looks and sounds like mush
- It was one of the first arcade to use extensive digital sampling, from digitized photos to a digitized soundtrack.
- The arcade sequel
- Players can rotate their choppers 360 degrees, so they can fire at an angle or even downwards.
- Players can destroy nearly everything on screen, even buildings
- At the end there are cut scenes including a news anchor of the fictional SBC News Network, and army generals commenting on your progress.
- ARCADE GAME
- EGL
- Next week -
- NEStalgia Byte - Battle City
- POWER UPS
- Black S - The first P-Up will result in your three shots going right-left-right
- at a 45 degree angle from each other, as opposed to going straight
- through. Once you obtain a second Power-Up, you will be able to fire
- two bullets at once (six in one rotation) one to the left, one to the
- right. The third time, you will fire three at a time, one each in the
- left, center, and right.
- Gold S - To a maximum of two, picking this up will allow your aircraft to move
- a lot faster. Compatible with weapon upgrades.
- Black P - For some reason, this is the exact same Power-Up as Black S, to the
- point where the two are even compatible with each other. So if you
- can't get a Black S from a Power-Up, use a Black P (or vice versa)
- Green W - While the first upgrade only allows you to shoot one bullet at a time
- going straight forward, the second upgrade allows you to shoot them in
- pairs. #3 will space out the pair of bullets, while #4 will allow you
- to shoot three bullets out, one straight and the other at 45 degree
- angles.
- Rocket - While the first upgrade only allows you to shoot one bullet at a time
- going straight forward, the second upgrade allows you to shoot them in
- pairs. #3 will space out the pair of bullets, while the fourth one will
- let you fire three at a time, one to the left, center, and right. To
- boot, it is with rockets, which easily outclass most of the other
- weapons, and can slaughter anything except for the final boss in one
- hit.
- Arrow - Obtaining the first Power-Up will allow you to shoot a pea-sized bullet
- upwards. However, the second upgrade will let you shoot a bullet behind
- and ahead of you at the same time, attacking any enemies that might get
- around you. The third upgrade is where it really gets into the heat, as
- you can shoot two bullets up and one bullet down. Unfortunately, it
- cannot go any higher than that (and being able to fire three bullets
- behind and in front would probably be too much of godmoding).