Neo Geo

Ghost Pilots

The action is smooth and easy to control, and the military-style music adds a sense of urgency. Your plane's guns can power up to three levels, and you also have a supply of bombs. I appreciate how the bombs absorb incoming missiles, doubling as a shield. The background scenery is clean but unspectacular, and the bosses tend to be generic mechanical beasts. After finishing the first stage, you can choose one of two stages to play next, as well as the type of bomb you'd like to employ. Ghosts Pilots limits you to three continues, so you probably won't blow through the game in one sitting. The high scores are not saved, which is a bummer. But as one of the more affordable Neo Geo shooters, Ghost Pilots is definitely worth tracking down.

As one of the few affordable shooters for the Geo, this is one to pick up. The gameplay may be derivative of hundreds of other shooters and a blatant rip-off of another, but it's one of the best on the Geo. It's just one of those games that does nothing terribly wrong, but has a few nagging things that bring it down a few notches. The games massive length will cause your hands to cramp, but thanks to unlimited continues, your guaranteed victory (unless there's a power outage or something of course). Having an auto firing controller would be extremely helpful, but I guess we can't have everything.

The game has no saving graces - it's so completely mediocre, you'll wonder if the programmers knew the machine was a powerful 16 bit monster when they blatantly copied Flying Shark. An expensive exercise in poor design and dodgy programming which, frankly, sucks.