In
the late eighties, you couldn't turn around from the change/token machine
without running into another shoot 'em up. Just picture today's arcades,
replace all the fighting and driving games with shooters and you're on the
trolley. One of the amusing entries in this arena was Twin Eagle.The aptly named arcade favorite is the story of two eagle brothers whose girlfriend is kidnapped at the outset of the game and held hostage by a group of hawklike thugs. Ed and Earl Eagle must punch, chop, kick, and decapitate their foes on the way to their final showdown with the vile Vulture...uhh, no. Wait a minute. Named because it had the entertaining advantage of allowing two player simultaneous play, Twin Eagle is for the most part your standard shooter. You guide a helicopter capable of shooting or bombing objects that fly or scroll by in the vertical, top to bottom fashion, and if your game ends, simply insert another quarter to keep going. Every so often, power-ups appear, and grabbing them adds an extra bomb to your reserve, speeds up your copter, or juices up your firepower.
The graphics in Twin Eagle are above average, although not quite spectacular. The gameplay is pretty standard, ie, reduce everything to cinders. Why then, are we discussing Twin Eagle? Well, here's why.
It's the first "aircraft flying over stuff" game I remember playing where everything on the screen was fair game for your itchy trigger finger. Buildings, trees, hapless soldiers without tanks or any sort of armor, who cares? Blast 'em all into oblivion! When you blow up the larger stuff, you're rewarded with enough fire and brimstone to choke Mephisto himself, and unleashing a bomb shakes the screen as well as your eardrums. Also, and probably the single most memorable thing about the game is that it plays a really loud, quasi rock tune during the "bonus" rounds. After flying over a certain amount of terrain, your whirlybird speeds up to mach five and engages enemy planes while a song with the following lyrics blares from the speakers: "A WAH, A WAH, A WAH, GONNA BOMB A TOWWWWWN..." Well, that was as near as we could figure anyway.
If you can track this game down at a highway rest stop, local pizza joint, or sleazy laundromat, drop a quarter in and play through until you get to that point. You won't be disappointed. It really is very entertaining in that "bomb them back to the stone age" way.
NOTE: A version of this fun coin-op shooter was produced for the NES, but it retains nothing that made the upright enjoyable. Stay away from it unless you're overly curious or tired of the countless good shooters available for the N-8.
