I would have told him to fuck himself anyway.
Heh.

Didn't mean to give Phet the wrong impression, so lemme try again.
I remember playing
Moon Cresta as a kid. Not great but not a bad game either (for 1980). Hard. The enemy movements were way worse than
Galaxian or any other vertical space shooter of the time, like the game was taunting you. Cool music and sound effects though (if a bit repetitive). The graphics weren't bad for its day, and the ship docking bonus stages were new to the scene.
Fast forward to last year when I finally got to play
Eagle for the first time, and on a real Centuri cab no less. Hey! I've played this game before! And... I don't remember it sucking this badly.
Eagle seemed to have clunkier, uglier graphics, worse sound effects and music (although that could be my imagination), and
the worst hit detection I'd ever seen. Strike three, you're out.
Normally bad hit detection is enough to sink an otherwise good game but you may still enjoy playing it. In
Eagle's case the awful hit detection, coupled with few redeeming qualities elsewhere, gives you an excellent reason to abandon your quarter mid-game and go play something better.
As a matter of comparison,
Zoo Keeper has fairly crappy hit detection, almost as bad as
Eagle's, actually. The difference here is that sloppy hit detection is
Zoo Keeper's
only weakness (in my opinion).
Zoo Keeper is so full of awesome in every other aspect of its design that its lazy hit detection isn't a drawback, it's part of the game's charm, and it adds a relatively balanced "wildcard" behavior that can work in your favor or not. Nothing like running through an animal at full speed and coming out the other side like he was a ghost. You shoulda been dead, but you're still going. But it can screw you too. The other day I was cleaning up with the net at the very end of a hectic board, preparing to collect big points for all the lions I was bagging. I ran right through the last lion, net still in hand, f*cked out of 60,000 points. It just made me laugh though.
Zoo Keeper's bad hit detection can hurt you or help you, adding a fun quirk to an otherwise excellent game.
Eagle just f*cks you, and you had to suffer through its gaudy graphics and sloppy game play for the privilege. If you like this type of early vertical space shooter, find a
Moon Cresta instead, or better yet a
Pleiades or
Phoenix. Just to be clear, I'm not a fan of
Moon Cresta. It was cool in 1980 when I was 8-9 years old. Today after 30 years of reflection and the benefit of a huge MAME ROM set for comparison purposes, it isn't
terrible but it doesn't hold up well. I'm just saying it's better than
Eagle. Some people here have the opposite opinion. Maybe our views are slanted by whatever title we saw and played back in the day. For me it was
Moon Cresta and I'd never seen or even heard of
Eagle until a couple of years ago, hence my bad initial impression of it when I played it last year.
That's my $.02.
Eagle does have its fans, and I give props to Jimmy Linderman for putting up a huge new WR score last summer of 259K, hence my "If you're into chasing record scores and you're sadomasochistic I imagine it'd be right up your alley" comment. And I know there are a couple of games I like that most other people don't give the time of day, so it's all good.
