PEG's video: Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe s Brother Arcade - ALL Clear 2 291 900 Pts

Full run of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe's Brother (ツインイーグル). developed by SETA. Stage Listing: 00:00 - Stage 1 03:40 - Stage 2 07:02 - Stage 3 10:23 - Stage 4 13:43 - Stage 5 18:31 - Stage 6 22:46 - Final Boss + Ending Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe's Brother is a rather infamous arcade shmup developed by SETA and released in the late 80's. Beyond it's ridiculous subtitle, it's also known for the "photo realistic" graphics and rockin' soundtrack containing a whopping 2 songs. And you play as a helicopter, so it must be good right? (*Cough* D-Force *Cough*) Now I must admit for 1988 these graphics were pretty impressive, as they apparently use digitized images of actual environments which was fairly new at the time. The water animation in particular I find very appealing for some reason. And I'll be damned if that soundtrack isn't catchy even if they are nothing more than short, repetitive loops. The music during the chase sequences ("Gonna break it down!") is nothing if not memorable. Has any game soundtrack done so much with so little? Probably yes, but still I can't deny it somehow works here. Now lets talk about the actual game, is this thing any good and do you get revenge for Joe? I don't know, I guess? Your objective is to kill everything in sight on your quest to avenge Joe's Bother. Along the way you will find powerups for your weapon shot and range, speed ups, and also extra bombs. You also get armor piercing shots that last for a limited number of shots. The levels themselves are fairly generic, with jungle and mountain terrain where you fight against your standard military enemies such as tanks, troops, turrets, helicopters. The 5th stage is a sea-based level with battleships and a large aircraft carrier while the final stage is an all out assault on a village. There are no real bosses in the game at all, with the final boss being the villain's house. At the end of each level there are chase sequences where you must destroy a bunch of fighter jets for extra points. And here lies the main issue with the game, these chase sequences are just flat out unfair. Fighter jets materialize from all sides of the screen and can kill you instantly without much warning. That combined with missiles coming from the bottom of the screen make for a very hectic, random mess. And you must survive 5 of these sequences to reach the final level. Twin Eagle is no joke, and it's listed as one of the hardest shmups ever made according to a certain Japanese wiki (https://www.wikihouse.com/stg/index.php?STG%A5%E9%A5%F3%A5%AF%B0%EC%CD%F7). It's rated a 41, higher than a DoDonPachi 2-ALL (rated at 40, and also the hardest game I've ever personally cleared). This is definitely an exaggeration of it's actually difficulty, but it is one of those strange shmups that is extremely difficult to clear consistently due to all the randomness. Did I mention that you only get 3 lives and no extends? Did I also mention that when you die you are powered down to nothing? Your ship is so slow that you are a sitting duck and with die mercilessly to chain deaths. You do have 3 bombs per life to help you out but those go fast and then you are helpless. Did I also mention that this game has a rank system? There are several factors that increase the rank including picking up shot powerups, using autofire, and simply advancing levels. That number listen in the hi score table ("level") is actually the highest rank value that you got to during the game, and it maxes out at 15. I should mention that there is a nasty trap (bug?) programmed in the game that maxes out the rank if you have an autofire rate around 16Hz or higher. You can get aware with short bursts of high autofire (I make use of this early in the game) without maxing rank but you must be very careful not to hold it down for too long or the game difficulty will go nuts. There is also a side effect of this max rank (bug?) that will instantly power you up to full shot power which you can fall back on if you die. This is only really feasible to use if you are deep into the game though, as the chase sequences will be nearly impossible at max rank. I also make use of this since I died it the final chase sequence. Twin Eagle is a frustrating and messy experience, and I can't imagine too many players would play it for more than a few minutes before calling it a POS and never touching it again. I don't blame them, but every shmup offers something, and Twin Eagle is certainly a different experience than most, for better or worse.