Aero Fighters is a thoroughly solid game, let’s get that out of the way. It is also a game that is easy to forget. At a time when shooters were a dime a dozen it did not exactly stand out. Yet this long running series is memorable for a number of reasons. The first are their wacky story and characters that only got worse as the series progressed. The second is its price: Aero Fighters 3 was at one point one of the most expensive games of all time. The first in the series keeps its insanity in check and makes for a good old afternoon full of fun, nothing more, nothing less.
Aero Fighters at first glance is an unassuming game. It would be easy to write it off as a generic military shoot em up which, to a certain extent, it is. But it does have some unique features. Aero Fighters borrows character selection from fighting games to give its gameplay variety. Each country has two pilots, one for both players. And boy do they encompass a wide swath of stereotypes. Hien is a ninja from Japan, and his partner is an idol singer. Sweden sends Kohful the Viking and Tee Tee to stop the invasion. The only ones playing it straight are the pilots from America. It is goofy as hell but does give the game some personality.
Each ship/character comes with a unique weapon that evolves differently and alters your play style. Keaton and Keith have the closest to your standard shooter weapons, with a straightforward Vulcan shot and missiles. Villiam’s spread gun covers a wide area but is less powerful to make up for it. Hien’s ship has powerful shuriken and heat seeking missiles. One quirk about the power-up system is that your weapon’s highest level only lasts a brief period before degrading. As well as their standard weapons each character’s bombs differ as well, from a massive tactical nuke to a carpet bomb.
To a large extent these are Aero Fighter’s sole defining characteristics. Outside of its character selection and weaponry it is as bog standard as they come. The best way to describe Aero Fighters is solid. It doesn’t try to be innovative with a unique scoring system or gameplay mechanic. It moves a brisk pace, has solid action, but is never so frantic that it is overwhelming.
Unlike most games in the genre Aero Fighters has some amount of replay value. Each character plays differently but also has a different level order, at least for their first few stages. It is interesting but also presents a conundrum for some characters. There are certain levels that are clearly intended to be end game areas. Facing these early on kinds of ruins the pacing for some heroes, especially for shooter novices. Aside from the random stage order the final boss is also chosen at random. Some of these are….special. I think I’ll drop this here with no context to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
Compared to most shooters of the day Aero Fighters is only moderately challenging. Power-ups drop at a regular clip and while no one weapon is overpowered none are at a disadvantage either. Dying is a massive setback as only a single power-up drops. It doesn’t really help and makes the bullet sponge bosses seemingly take forever to go down. The action picks up considerably toward the end but is slow enough that even newbies to the genre can handle it. The limited continues aren’t much of a deterrent to reaching the end but I also have to take into account that I’m more skilled with shooters than most.
As a port the SNES version of Aero Fighters is pretty close to the arcade. The resolution is lower and the backgrounds feature slightly less detail but it is 90% there. Slowdown is kept to a bare minimum as this isn’t the most ambitious technically which helps. It only crops up a few times toward the end. The music doesn’t reach the same standard and to be honest within few minutes I forgot the game even had a soundtrack. Take that as you will.
In Closing
Aero Fighters does exactly what it set out to do, nail the fundamentals and nothing more. I respect a game that knows what it wants to be. Not that I would recommend it over the better SNES shooters out there but it doesn’t make a bad second choice.
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