Aeroblasters - Sega Megadrive

Review comments

Aeroblasters box art The world is in danger! Six elite terrorist groups are threatening to reduce the world to a barren, featureless planet. At times like this when danger is near and deeds must be done, the Aeroblaster 'Trouble Speciality' Raid Unit are dispatched to save the day.Two fighter pilots, Holly and Mike (no sexism here, although from the looks of their portraits, Holly could easily pummel Mike in a one-on-one fist fight) are sent in, aboard their trusty Buster-class planes. The object is very straightforward. The screen scrolls horizontally and your task as either Holly or Mike is to keep your finger jammed down on that trigger and blast everything hostile that gets in your path.At the end of each of the six levels, the terrorists have left a little surprise for our airborne heroes. A whole host of very large (and very deadly) end-of-level guardians await before the reign of terror can be brought to an end and our heroes can be home in time for tea.

Staff comments

Why oh why are Sega insisting on flooding the market with scrolling shoot 'em ups? Aeroblasters must be the fifth (maybe the sixth) we've seen this month! On the plus side, it is a close conversion of the relatively unknown coin-op with great sprites, interesting backdrops and great simultaneous two-player laughs. It certainly kept the Mean Machines team occupied for a while, but it wasn't long before we were all going back to Gynoug for our shoot 'em up thrills. Hellfire and Gynoug are probably the best blasters to go for, but two-player action addicts should have a butcher's at this.

Like Hellfire, Aeroblasters wasn't an arcade hit due to its rather unoriginal gameplay and uninspiring looks. But it has translated to the Megadrive well, and provides plenty of double player death and destruction. My only gripe is that it's easy to complete on the standard level because of the heap of continues, and to get a decent challenge you have to set the difficulty level to maximum. Still, if you're prepared to do that, Aeroblasters is a thoroughly enjoyable and good looking (some of the parallax-backgrounds are superb) blaster which is well worth adding to your collection - as long as you haven't already got several games of this type already.

Retrospective comments

One of my local pubs had an Aero Blasters arcade cabinet back in the early 90's and I pumped plenty of pocket money into it whilst my parents drank the night away. Imagine my joy at discovering that this fine blaster had been ported to Sega's 16-bit box of tricks. I think the guys were pretty harsh on this game (although that is forgivable when you consider the volume of MD shooters being released at the time). It's a fine example of the genre, with nice colourful visuals, toe-tapping music and some original level ideas. The 'tunnel rush' sections are exciting and really get the heart pumping! Some of the boss designs are really first-class, and overall it's a very attractive piece of software. Granted, there are better shooters on the machine, but if you've sampled them all and want to add another blaster to your collection, I recommend you give Aero Blasters a chance.