SNK Shooter Sensations

While SNK is best known for the Neo Geo, they’ve been making arcade games long before then. Now you can download and play three popular SNK shooters from the mid-80’s as PS Minis on PS3 and PSP. The three classics are Vanguard II, TNKIII, and Alpha Mission.

Vanguard II

While the original Vanguard was an innovative for the time side scrolling shooter, the sequel is entirely different. You view the action from a top-down perspective and can fly in any direction. Gameplay is like a combination of Namco’s Bosconian and Xevious games. You can shoot lasers to blast air targets, and bombs to sink ground targets, similar to Xevious. But you can move in all directions and must shoot a number of ground pods to progress, kind of like Bosconian. After you shoot a given number of ground pods, you can fight the boss and move on to the next base.

TNKIII

TNKIII looks like a precursor to SNK’s hit Ikari Warriors. Except here, you’re always in a tank. Move in any direction but you must progress forward through jungles and enemy bases. You have a regular machine gun as well as your more powerful tank turret shots, which you can rotate with one of the buttons to shoot in any direction. Because of this, the play control can be a little tricky. Your tank can take multiple hits, so while foot soldiers pose little threat, enemy tanks can be tougher to take down.

Alpha Mission

Out of all the SNK shooter games in this group, Alpha Mission is really the one I remember playing most, as it was in quite a few arcades when I was young, and there was even a NES version. This vertically scrolling shooter is also quite a bit like Xevious, because you can shoot both air and ground targets with lasers and bombs. Bombed targets sometimes leave power-ups in the form of letters to boost your shots and increase your score. Watch out, though, because some letters can decrease your power! Sometimes you can pick up ship parts and when you have enough, you can transform your ship into a more powerful one, with upgrades like a shield, 8-way fire, or flamethrower, depending on what parts you pick up. Only bad thing about Alpha Mission is when you die, you have to start back from the beginning of the level, no matter how far you progressed.

All three games cost 3 bucks each to download; you probably spent that much in quarters back in the day to play these. So if you enjoy classic arcade shooters, any one of these games would be worth downloading, or all three.

Kid Factor:

I’m not sure if any of these games are rated by the ESRB, but I would say they should all be E for Everyone. You only shoot down spaceships in Alpha Mission and Vanguard II, and they just explode and disappear. You do shoot soldiers in the tank game, but the graphics are so rudimentary that it negates any of the violence. Plus, the soldiers are so short and squatty in the game they look almost…cute! Anyway, classic arcade games like these are great for little kids because no reading skill is required and the games are simple enough to figure out just by playing. Some younger players might get frustrated at the arcade quarter munching style difficulty, though.

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