Sonic Wings 3 Reunion Review

If you are not part of the STG community it is likely that you are not familiar with the Sonic Wings series. Its initial arcade release never gained much traction outside Japan. The home port on SNES was released under the name Aero Fighters and had a very limited print run in the US. It is now considered a holy grail in the collectors scene and depending on grade it can cost between 800 and 2,500 dollars. This leaves the PAL version as the only region where it was widely available and still affordable on eBay.

The second and third entries found their way to western audiences mostly through SNK’s popular arcade platform Neo Geo. As vertical shmups were underrepresented on that platform, both titles received attention simply due to a lack of alternatives. Sonic Wings 2 and 3 are considered solid shooters that many remember as reliable games on both the arcade and home versions of the Neo Geo.

A dormant franchise revived

Roughly 30 years later Hamster together with SUCCESS Corp and publisher Red Art Games brings the dormant franchise back with a completely new release. While it is new in the literal sense, Sonic Wings REUNION sticks closely to the core gameplay elements that have defined the series. It plays almost exactly like the earlier games with straightforward vertical shooting, a main fire button, a special attack, power ups that increase firepower and range, and destructible buildings and ground units that reveal items for extra points.

Characters, combinations, and playstyle

So far, nothing surprising, and to be clear the Sonic Wings franchise has always been simple at its core. What REUNION adds is the full roster of playable characters from all previous games. Each character has specific traits that may fit your playstyle or fail to do so entirely. Ships can be fast or slow and are usually balanced with high or low firepower. Besides selecting a main pilot you can assign a secondary pilot as a wingman. This grants you their special attack as a secondary ability. It allows you to mix and match, cover weaknesses, and create combinations that compensate for a pilot with strong basic attacks but a weak special. The concept encourages trial and error runs to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of the cast.

Stage structure and pacing

The game features seven stages. The first four are randomized, a mechanic you may know from Psikyo shooters like Strikers 1945 and Gunbird. No matter the order you play them in, their difficulty rises incrementally. Having a boss that gives you trouble appear in the fourth stage instead of the first can make a notable difference.

Sonic Wings has never been a coin guzzling arcade series, to begin with, and once you have enough practice you have a fair chance of clearing the game on one credit. It is moderately paced with enemy bullets that keep a consistent speed across most encounters. This makes it easier to manage than modern bullet hell shooters. The final stages are frantic but still manageable for players with moderate shmup experience.

Accessibility and influences

On to the subject of difficulty. That is always a lively topic in this genre. Based on my experience with Psikyo shooters of the same era, Sonic Wings REUNION is more accessible than many of its competitors on the Nintendo eShop. Its pacing gives you more time to process incoming enemies and the chaos builds gradually. You can compare it to SUCCESS’ other well known series Cotton. Within the horizontal cutesy shooter space those games are also milder in pace.

Another point worth noting is how much Sonic Wings REUNION looks and feels like Psikyo’s Strikers 1945. Visually and mechanically it can be hard to tell the two apart. Thematically both series have always had things in common, but with the graphical style SUCCESS has chosen this game and Strikers 1945 III are almost indistinguishable. REUNION sometimes feels like an imitation rather than a continuation of its own identity. The inclusion of random stage order strengthens that impression.

Replay value

So now that we have established that Sonic Wings REUNION stays very close to its origins, the question is what it adds to the growing wave of shmup revivals. The answer is not much. It is a decent shooter with few surprises, somewhat weak stage bosses, and no real bonus features or extra content. The leaderboards are the exception. They are well implemented and include rankings for every difficulty level and for every character.

This is where I personally find the most enjoyment. I try to get respectable scores for each character and across all difficulties. It adds much needed replay value to a package that is otherwise fairly average.