At a glance: Aero Fighters 2 · Neo Geo CD · Video System, 1994 · Shoot ’em up · Score: 8.5/10
Aero Fighters 2 (1994, Video System; Sonic Wings 2 in Japan) is the vertical shooter as globetrotting variety show. Eight pilots — including a dolphin-adjacent ensemble of eccentrics: the ninja Hien, the pop-star idol Mao Mao, the infant in a fighter jet (really), and Robo Keaton, a chimpanzee in a robot suit (also really) — fly ten stages across a world of destructible capitals. Paris loses its tower, the desert hides a super-tank, the jungle hides worse. Each pilot’s jet has its own shot pattern and screen-clearing bomb, and the game supports two-player co-op with combination attacks when the jets fly in formation — a system that makes partner choice a real decision.
The design tempo is brisk and generous compared to Pulstar’s school: power-ups flow, bombs are plentiful, extends come at honest intervals, and the difficulty climbs by density rather than cruelty. It is the friendliest great shooter on the system — the one you hand a newcomer — with a scoring and mastery ceiling that keeps veterans routing stages and milking bosses long after the credits become routine.
The CD conversion
Vertical shooters and the CD are natural partners — stage-streamed, self-contained, no roster to juggle — and Aero Fighters 2 converts cleanly. Stages load in the standard interval, play uninterrupted with every sprite and effect of the cartridge, and the two-player mode survives whole, formation attacks included. The CD soundtrack rearranges Video System’s score with extra punch, and Mao Mao’s stage theme remains the earworm it always was.
Against the AES cartridge — a mid-tier rarity — the disc offers the complete game at the usual fraction, with stage loads as the only toll. Of the shooters in this package it is the most immediately welcoming, and its CD edition is correspondingly easy to recommend without asterisks beyond the monkey’s brief appearances between stages.
Aero Fighters 2 is the shooter as world tour — every capital a boss fight, every landmark an excuse.
Formation flying
The formation system is the feature history underrates: in two-player mode, when both jets fly in tight formation, their firepower merges into combination attacks stronger than either plane’s — a mechanic that turns co-op from parallel play into genuine teamwork, with positioning arguments conducted at bullet speed. The cast’s comedy supports the system rather than distracting from it: a baby, a dolphin-pilot’s ensemble-mates, a chimp in a robot suit — Video System’s menagerie is the genre’s most cheerful, and each pilot’s bomb is a small national pageant of destruction. Stage variety sustains the tour: capitals, deserts, jungles and fleets, each with destructible set-dressing that rewards the sightseeing gunner.
The CD edition carries all of it with the format’s shooter-standard manners — stage loads, arranged punch, nothing cut — and sits in the library’s friendliest price band, Japanese pressings plentiful. As the gateway shooter of this collection it has one rival (Pulstar is greater and crueller), and the honest recommendation is both, in this order: learn the skies here, then go and be bullied beautifully there.
The CD version in 2026
Playing Aero Fighters 2 on the format today is the easiest recommendation in this collection’s shooter wing. On original hardware the disc’s stage loads are the same brief monkey interval on any model — the CDZ and modern SD loaders shorten a wait that was never the point — and the arranged soundtrack argues for real speakers and the original machine where possible. Emulation samples the game faithfully for buyers deciding on a disc, and the discs themselves remain in the format’s friendly price bands, Japanese pressings plentiful and region-free. This is the Neo Geo CD working exactly as its designers hoped: the arcade’s art, streamed in chapters, at a living-room price. The shooter shelf of any CD collection starts with the famous names; it is completed by games played exactly like this one.
The verdict
Aero Fighters 2 is a joyful, polished vertical shooter whose cast and world tour give it personality most of the genre lacks, and on CD it is all here. Pulstar is the system’s beautiful bully; this is its charming crowd-pleaser — and the shelf wants both.
The pilots’ manifest
Meet the manifest properly, because the cast is the game’s signature and its strangest bequest to the genre. Alongside the expected aces — the American captain, the Japanese ninja Hien, the French veteran — Video System fields Mao Mao, an idol singer whose special weapon is a pageant; a literal infant, flying in a custom jet, whose presence the game declines to explain; and Robo Keaton, a chimpanzee in a robot body, the ensemble’s deadpan masterpiece. Each pilot’s shot pattern, speed and bomb genuinely differentiate the sorties — this is not a reskin roster but eight small games sharing ten stages — and the two-player formation attacks multiply the combinations into a real co-op metagame. Vertical shooters are a solemn genre. This one grins, and the grin is load-bearing.
The CD ledger, finally, is the shooter’s standard happy one: complete stages, arranged punch, stage-joint loads, and a price band that has stayed friendly while the cartridge firmed up. Aero Fighters 2 is the collection’s recommended first shooter for new owners — welcoming in a way Pulstar refuses to be — and its disc is the version the recommendation assumes.
One more virtue for the ledger, because it decides real evenings: Aero Fighters 2 is the shooter in this collection most likely to convert a sceptical friend. Its first stages flatter, its cast charms, its bombs forgive, and its difficulty only later reveals the examination underneath. Gateway games are infrastructure for a hobby, and the CD — cheap, complete, cheerful — is this one’s natural habitat.
The tour ends, as all its tours end, with the credits rolling over a world reassembled and a score table arguing for one more credit. Thirty years of quarters and continues have not dulled the argument. The disc is how the tour boards at home; take a window seat.
Final notes
Difficulty honesty for the newcomers this review keeps recruiting: the first loop is a fair teacher — generous bombs, readable patterns, extends at sane intervals — and the second loop is the genre’s usual beautiful malice. The CD’s continues make the sights available to tourists; the one-credit game remains the residents’ exam, as it should.
The stage design’s destructible landmarks deserve their due as a scoring system in disguise: ground targets and scenery carry the points economy, and route mastery is mostly the art of being in position to vandalise efficiently. Few shooters make sightseeing and score attack the same activity. This one’s world tour is a points itinerary wearing a holiday’s clothes.
Against its own sequel — Aero Fighters 3, bigger and stranger, also on CD — the second game remains the balanced classic, and against the cartridge it remains the same game at the format’s usual mercy. The crowd-pleaser’s disc is the crowd’s price. Take the tour.
Short version for the shelf-talker: the friendliest great shooter on the system, complete on disc, priced like a favour. Start here, then graduate to Pulstar’s beautiful cruelty with your wings already earned.
Score: 8.5/10 — The world tour of destruction, complete on disc: the friendliest great shooter on the system.