Air Buster

Air Buster: Trouble Specialty Raid Unit a.k.a. Aero Blasters: Trouble Specialty Raid Unit is a 1990 horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Kaneko and licensed to Namco. The game was originally released in the arcades in 1990 and was subsequently released for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 (as Aero Blasters) and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (as Air Buster in North America) in 1990 and 1991 respectively.

In Air Buster, the player controls a fighter jet also designed for space travel and shoots enemies, collects power-ups, and defeats bosses to advance levels. As a console game, Air Buster had the distinction of being two player simultaneous, which was rare among side scrolling shooters on home consoles at the time.

Gameplay

Players choose between one of the two Blaster fighters through scrolling six stages. The Blaster fighters can equip one of seven weapons. The weapons include the Striker weapon which adds additional firepower through vertically aligned Options, the Reverse shot which fires two diagonal shots from the rear of the ship, the Six Way Shot which fires semi-automatic shots in six directions and the Homing Shot which tracks enemies all around the screen.