UN Squadron Review

I grew up with shoot em ups like R-Type and Gradius. They weren’t my go-to games in arcades or on consoles but I still had a lot of fun playing them with friends, and if I had to pick my favorites, it’d be narrowed down to Life Force, Einhander, and the topic of today’s From the Vault Review: UN Squadron on the SNES.

Released in 1991 it was a title that I never would’ve even given a second thought to except a buddy that lived down the street rented it and invited me over to watch him play it. Yeah, watch him. As in, “if it’s single player you won’t get a turn (LULZ)” But then I would still go over and watch because the only console I owned at that time was a Colecovision. While I have great memories of playing it and am grateful to my parents for having it, to this day it still takes an electrician to come over and hook up because it is a nightmare of cables and attachments that would make even Shodan from System Shock scream at and flee in Terror.

Fast forward 30 years and I’ve long since bought an SNES and UN Squadron, and this is a game I still like to come back to and enjoy. I’ve never beaten it because frankly I’m awful at it, but it’s still a lot of fun and challenging without being frustrating.

The story in a nutshell is that the evil Project 4 is oppressing the people of Aslan, with mercenaries controlling the whole country, except for one airfield. This airfield, coincidentally, is the base of of the best fighter pilots in the world, the UN Squadron.

Firing up a new game lets you choose one of 3 different fighters, each with different strengths. Can you be called a “squadron” with only 3 people? I have no clue and I’m too lazy to find out. You pick your plane and your sub-weapons with whatever money you have available, and then you’re off to the map screen where some guy with hair like Hugo Weaving had as Elrond in Lord of the Rings helps you choose which levels you want to tackle, in any order you want. You get cash for completing levels and you even get to keep what you have when you die as well. The strategy here is to take on the levels you’re best at first so you can get the cash together to buy better planes and weapons when trying to beat the harder ones. One of the cool parts about this game to me is that if you lose in a level, it won’t make you restart that level itself but put you back on the map screen, where the enemy has most likely advanced on your base. So your challenge comes in 2 parts – one being that you have not lose all your lives and continues, but also not mess up so often that the enemy makes it to your base as the more you get painted in a corner and put on the defensive, the less options you’ll have. I don’t remember any shoot em ups doing that at the time so I thought this was a great mechanic that added some extra strategy.

You may not be able to tell from my video but the graphics have aged really well. The music is typical catchy Capcom goodness with lots of upbeat tunes, plenty of exposions and the characters have this fun anime look that’s equal parts cartoony and stylish.

It’s a side-scrolling shoot em up so anybody used to playing games like that will feel immediately at home here. While blowing up ground and air enemies, you’ll want to make sure you blow up everything orange-ish red to get power ups that eventually level up your plane and strengthen its firepower. When you need to kick the enemy in the balls a little extra, the sub-weapons are not only hugely useful but really fun to look at also. Most of these things look like something Tony Stark invented. The end of each level has a boss and even the easiest ones have some trick you’ll need to watch out for, and the harder ones will definitely whoop you pretty hard before you’re able to finally beat them. But practice makes perfect, and this game stays fun while you get better at it. The bosses range from stealth bombers, to giant submarines, tanks, and so-on.

You may not be able to tell from my video but the graphics have aged really well. The music is typical catchy Capcom goodness with lots of upbeat tunes, plenty of exposions and the characters have this fun anime look that’s equal parts cartoony and stylish. The levels all look and play differently, and there’s even some collateral damage that you can do to the environment, like blowing up trees and such. One of my favorites is the level where you fight this giant stealth bomber at the end, and the whole level consists of flying through the clouds of a thunderstorm. It’s awesome because you’re dogfighting dozens of planes while also seeing flashes of light with other clouds scrolling by in the background. For a 16 bit game it’s surprisingly immersive.

I still look at the SNES and Genesis generation as one of my very favorites for gaming because while the big standout titles of both of these are still some of the best in gaming, there’s some more obscure titles like UN Squadron that bring back great memories and are still fun to play decades later. As always, if you have an SNES or are planning on buying one, this is such an easy recommendation to pick up along with it and you’ll have lots of fun playing it. It plays great, looks great, and it’s really just a cool title. Just make sure that if you have someone over to play it with you to be nice and share the controller.