Every level begins with a sort of “check-in”, and our pilots often communicate deep thoughts like “It’s time to save Mexico!” or “Man, I could use a water.” If you are playing in two player mode, though, these monologues become dialogues, and the different characters bounce off each other in different ways. Right from hitting the start button, any given pilot relays their thoughts, and that segues into a light running narrative through the whole of the game. That demands an explanation!Īnd Aero Fighters 2 is ready to fill in the blanks. Mao Mao and Robo Keaton are, in essence, remarkably similar planes.īut Spanky the Dolphin is an actual goddamned dolphin. Blanka and Ryu are drastically different fighters. We are working off the same concept we see over and over again in racing games, TRPGs, and even modern mobile slot machines: you can have multiple-limbed aliens battling alongside actual Welsh Corgis, but they are all effectively “the same”, because they all exist in the same car/ship/playing card. In other words, you do not have to master a different “flying technique” to compensate for whether or not your chosen hero is a head in a jar. The different flyers have different (mostly real) ships, but they do not have drastically different hitboxes or movements. But, by the same token, this is not a fighting game. The different attacks and “bombs” of each aero fighter do have distinct effects on the world at large, so there is certainly an incentive to switch after every quarter and see which character better suits your playstyle. To be clear about the gameplay of Aero Fighters 2: yes there is a difference between the individual pilots during (aero) fighting. Oh, wait, there is the character select screen…Īnd a friggen flying dolphin. Nothing worth writing home about, and certainly not a reason to switch the ol’ Neo Geo over from World Heroes. Other than that, it is just a two button shooter where powerups just advance your weaponry in a linear fashion, and you can hit that bomb button if things get dicey. Or, put another way, yes, you can get powerups by shooting the Eiffel Tower. Aero Fighters 2 also tries to be “real” by including legitimate locations ( Mexico is a real place!) and featuring their attendant national landmarks. There are some whimsical enemies, so this is a little better than a mundane 1942, but there are still a lot of tanks, aircraft carriers, and “missile bases” to demolish. This is a basic vertical scrolling affair for two players. Chrono Trigger: It is about time travel! It has character designs from the Dragon Ball Z guy! It was produced by the people behind Final Fantasy! And, most of all, Chrono Trigger has multiple endings! More than ten! That is an amazing number of endings!Īnd, in the year 2021, it is difficult to understand why “so many endings” was, like, the best thing to ever happen to us 90’s kids.įor a look at why “endings” had a very different meaning back in the day, let us examine Aero Fighters 2.Īt first blush, there is not much about Aero Fighters 2 that distinguishes itself from anything else in the shoot ‘em up field of 1994. So Square USA Advertising had to focus on some less hyperbolic bullet points. The other point is when you meet Lavos and you are supposed to be killed by him, if you kill him and the other two forms, you will also get the ending.Chrono Trigger is one of the greatest videogames ever created… but it is hard to convey that in an advertisement in the pages of Gamepro. Talking to the monsters will let you see what the programmers would say. All it is is that you go to the end of Time and can enter the pillars of light which will send you to different points in the game. However, you can do this later in the game if you come back to the same spot, but I'm pretty sure at one point you can't do that anymore.Anyway, kill all three forms of Lavos and you win the ending with the Programmers. Doing this will take you to the last boss, its impossible to beat it at level 1 with just Chrono(it might be possible if you got Chrono up to a high level(99?)and did New Game+). The programmers room can be reached two ways, the first is when Chrono first goes to the fair and meets his friend Lucca(the inventor) when he is supposed to go onto the teleporter on the left, go on the one to the right and push "A"(I think, you have to push one of the 4 buttons any way).