
Capcom's top-down shooter Commando was something of a trendsetter when it arrived in the '80s, and was quickly imitated by a host of clones. The appeal of the concept isn't hard to grasp; you're one guy against many, shooting your way through a series of levels and generally causing as much destruction as possible along the way. It was like an '80s action flick in video game form.
Shock Troopers sticks to this tried and tested blueprint almost slavishly, and on its original release in 1997 it was rather late to the party - the top-down shooter genre was arguably on the way out. Despite this, the game takes the foundations laid down by Capcom's classic and polishes everything up to create one of the most enjoyable run-and-gun blasters of the period. This particular release of the game is part of Japanese company Hamster's ACA Neo Geo series, and is based on the arcade MVS edition rather than the AES home version.

The controls in Shock Troopers are easy to grasp but give you an impressive degree of movement. You can shoot in eight directions but holding down the fire button allows you to "lock" your aim and strafe targets. Grenades are on-hand for dealing out major damage, but these are limited in supply and should be used sparingly. Your basic weapon has unlimited ammo but dotted around the levels you'll find other armaments such as heavy machine guns, 3-way shotguns and flamethrowers. These have limited ammunition but are well worth picking up for the additional damage they deal.
Perhaps the most important element of the control system is the evade button, which allows you to quickly roll along the ground to avoid incoming threats. You won't get very far without mastering this move, and it gives the game a fast-paced feel which is missing from other titles of this type, like Capcom's MERCS. Finally, when you're close to an enemy pressing attack will automatically trigger a melee strike - but be warned, your opponent will most like attempt to do the same, so timing is critical.

Shock Troopers offers multiple routes through the game and two modes of play - Lonely Wolf and Team Battle. The first forces you to pick a character - each with different skills - and stick with them for the duration of the game, while the latter allows you to select a team so you can switch after each level. Being able to toggle your character gives the game some variety but there's not that much difference between these modes once you're actually in-game.
Visually Shock Troopers is workmanlike rather than striking. The hand-drawn 2D graphics are a little basic in places but there's some neat scaling in place, and some of the humour which is found in fellow Neo Geo title Metal Slug is also present here; at one point, you attack an enemy hospital camp packed with wounded soldiers on stretchers. Shoot the enemies carrying the stretchers and the wounded soldiers fall to the ground in pain, complete with comedy bulging eyeballs. The animation is fantastic throughout but some of the bosses lack impact. The audio is very much the same story; the rock-style tunes suit the action perfectly but they're not exactly memorable.

Like Hamster's other ACA Neo Geo titles for the Switch, Shock Troopers benefits from a raft of new features and options which weren't present in the Wii Virtual Console edition of the game. You can pick between the Japanese or western versions as well as choose from a range of screen filters to get the image you want. High scores are recorded and submitted online, and it's possible to create a save state at any point - a handy consideration given the portable nature of the Switch itself. Infinite continues are included but if you're feeling really hardcore you can try the Hi-Score mode which limits you to a single credit and tasks you with attaining the best score possible. Caravan mode is a variation on that theme but you're restricted to a certain amount of time and have to rack up as many points as possible. The ACA emulator is pretty much flawless (following the recent patch, at least) so everything looks, moves and sounds just as it should.
There's a two-player mode that can easily be accessed using the console's detachable Joy-Con controllers, which means that friendly co-op is a possibility no matter where you happen to be. When played with a friend Shock Troopers' entertainment value skyrockets, so make sure you have a willing companion close at hand at all times.
Conclusion
Shock Troopers may not add much to the top-down run-and-gun genre but it's enjoyable while it lasts. The visuals weren't particularly awe-inspiring back in 1997, but everything moves at a slick pace and neat elements of humour prevent things from becoming too serious. In single player you might get a week or so of play out of this, but with two people involved it becomes a lot more appealing - and thanks to those detachable Joy-Cons, co-op sessions are easy to arrange. Shock Troopers 2nd Squad may be considered the superior release, but the original is still worth checking out if you like your old-school arcade blasters.
Comments 42
Why don't indies mimic NEO GEO games instead of NES/SNES?
Spent a ton of quarters on this game as a kid.
I have been thinking about picking up either this or Metal Slug 3.
I love popping this in & just blasting everything for dumb arcade action fun, ya just need that once in a while & it's now portable.
Packing this and 2nd Squad would push games such as this into a more attractive proposition, but as it stands...
Lonely Wolf? Don't you mean... Lonly Wolf? XD
Also, is the "Caravan Mode" and "Hi-Score Mode" that the other ACA releases have present in this one as well?
@JHDK This more worth it I say. Metal Slug you can buy the collection on Wii/PS2/PS4. If you got any of those. Metal Slug also a harder game. Buuuuut... it's all up to you in the end.
@SmaMan Yep, they're both in there.
@JHDK I had both games on my MVS and both are great!
@SuperTeeter64 Cool. Thanks for the advice. I will be getting Afterbirth + today so maybe I will get this instead of Metal Slug to have an easy arcade shooter to go along with the hard dungeon crawler.
No, no, no. I will not accept 2nd Squad as superior with it's ugly art style, horrendous slowdown, and (most of all) unplayable co-op. Everyone I know considers Shock Troopers a classic and 2nd Squad a letdown...
Anyway, this is a fantastic choice for anyone looking to bust out their switch for tabletop (or TV, obviously) co-op. Pretty much everyone loves mowing down baddies in Shock Troopers, so if you have company chances are you have a recruit.
One important tidbit: Censorship is on by default - make sure you turn on "Brutal Depictions" in Game Setting for the true, gory experience. Makes a huge difference and leads to a more enjoyable game because the censored version lacks impact and therefore satisfaction.
@JHDK Glad to help out. I guess it's fair to mention this stand alone game also on PS3... buuuuuuut... yeah. Playing on the go is super slick awesome.
@Ryu_Niiyama You have good taste in games, in that case. I do love Shock Troopers.
I agree about the sprite work. I suspect indies mimich NES graphics due to a conbination of nostalgia and ease of development. I imagine it's a great deal more difficult to create and animate 16-color sprites over 4-color sprites. I do hope things move in that direction, though, as graphics from the 16-bit era and 2D from Saturn and Playstation are my favorite kinds of graphics. I seriously wouldn't mind if everything looked like it ran on CPS2 or Neo Geo.
@JHDK metal slug three is the superior game imo
EDIT: Nevermind, apparently they've been patched. Heavily considering a purchase.
Damo, very good review and very fair. I'd go with an 8 personally(I'm a big fan), but the number doesn't matter and you did a good job finding possible negatives to point out. I have not heard many cases of 2nd Squad being considered superior, however.
SNK had a knack for being late to genres, but making big improvements to certain formulas. Shock Troopers is quite a fun time for run-n-gun fans. I find Shock Troopers is a reliable game I can come back to every few months and play through it a bunch of times as it's satisfying to me and it's not too long or too short for a game of the type.
Can you play 2 player, one with joy cons other with pro?
@ACK I hate the CGI art in the second game but it's better overall IMO.
@Moon Yep.
downloaded metal slug 3 yesterday and really recommend it. I may get this as well
@JHDK Nothing wrong with this game, it's pretty good, but I too would recommend Metal Slug 3 first. Perhaps my opinion would differ slightly if not for nostalgia, but there's something special about Metal Slug.
That reminds me, I miss Ikari Warriors...
@sdelfin I would care a lot more about indies if that was the case. Also, thank you I am a Neo Geo (honestly arcade games in general as I live for fighting games, shumups and side scrolling beat em ups) junkie. There are a few of us around here. Also CPS 2 style games? I would have to start selling kidneys...don't worry they wouldn't be mine.
I loved this on my SNK Arcade Collection Vol. 1 on Wii. So the joy-con sharing works, huh? It didn't on Maku Maku 7 for me... I may rebuy this on my Switch if I can share the joy.
@Ryu_Niiyama for most indies, the art is the hardest part and they tend to have limited resources. NES/SNES visuals are far easier to create than the detailed pixel art of NeoGeo titles. On a commercial game you typically have many artist working on a game, indies usually have 1 or 2.
Yacht Club (Shovel Knight) for example started as a group of guys making a game. I think they had 2 artists if I remember.
I love this game. In hi-score mode I'm currently at third place in the world rankings!
So my 2 week old switch now has 5 games and this will be #6. 5 games and I'm still not done with Zelda. I'm going to be broke before Mario even gets here.
@Destron I acknowledge the dev costs but it still means that for me at least indies don't stand out because of the sea of NES graphics...I'm pretty ok with graphics in general, but for many of these games which try to clone other games in both looks and playstyle...I'd just rather play the original. I feel like good ideas might get lost in a "me too" paint job. I know I have ignored a large amount of indies because I would see them and feel nothing for the NES paint job. I had to demo shovel knight extensively before I decided to buy it.
@Donutman I was complaining about me Switch backlog by day 2. I'm not made of money devs.
@Damo I can agree that 2nd Squad has more variety and better level design compared to the somewhat rote content of ST; however, what I can't do is look past the persistent slowdown in co-op.
You could say Saurus really botched it with those graphics, chasing a modern look. Given that game is so unattractive and performs so poorly its a shame. Diminishing multiplayer (sacrificing, to be blunt) in a game of this sort is a hard bargain...
@Ryu_Niiyama it's not so much the cost as time, and sometimes possibly ability. (Unless they need to contract an artists, quality pixel artists don't come cheap) For a single or couple of artists it would take much longer to make a game with the more advanced art, which could also double the production time of the game.
With an indie, especially on your first game, you sometimes don't have the money to contract things to be made or spend years on making a game.
I'm not arguing against them having better art styles, just saying that some of them simply don't have the ability to do better, especially on their first outing. Simple pixel art is easy to execute.
That's also why so many indies that aren't trying for retro use simple vector art, because it's even easier to make than pixel art.
The line of what is an indie has been a bit blurred lately when you have full studios making "inidie" games. But real indie games are usually made by a few guys, sometimes just one guy and there is a chance your artists may be pulling double duty as it is.
@Destron Sorry when I say costs I am including man hours as well. Again I understand WHY they do it but at the same time that is WHY I don't buy from many indies. It is a catch 22... but as a consumer I have many, many choices so why pay for castlevania/metroid clone number 15 when I could play something else? Don't get me wrong, some indies have great ideas and they coexist just fine (I play both story of seasons and stardew valley at the same time or skull girls and whatever fighting games I'm working on atm) alongside larger devs but in a visual medium such as gaming they fade into the background a bit for me. Indie devs (in general) as a product producer haven't reached a maturity that makes them competitive with the bigger studios. Yet. For me.
@ACK - That's a good system actually (censored by default). I'm all in favour of people being able to see what they want (as long as it's legal, of course), but also in favour of offering protection to those who desire it. Nintendo should have implemented this with their recent censorship.
I don't think it's terribly off topic since it's mentioned in the first sentence: I had so much fun with Commando, the NES Advantage and the infinite grenade upgrade, just mowing through baddies.
Also, I gave SNK lots of my money, one quarter at a time.
@VR32F1END You have to drop back to the main screen and manually assign Joy Cons, but it does work.
@Ryu_Niiyama definitely good taste in games! Neo Geo is one of my favorite distinct platforms. And I can't get enough of the old scrolling beat-em-up games. I can play those over and over. I need to put more time into fighters(specifically, KOF 97 and 98, and Garou). My current favorite is Last Blade. I missed it and others when new, but finally put some time into it a few years back.
Also, thanks for a good laugh.
@Ryu_Niiyama I don't know how many people working today can make pixel art like SNK did in the Neo Geo era. It's not just the artistry, but the management of workflow, creations tools and testing/debugging. It's just a massive undertaking of a lost art. The fact that KOF XIV went 3D for budget reasons is telling.
@VR32F1END it works on Waku Waku 7: go to controller settings/change grip and hit the SL and SRs on the JCs.
Thanks for reviewing this.
I never owned a NeoGeo (family was dirt poor, lucky I owned any consoles as a kid). And now I wanna beef up a nice NeoGeo collection on Switch. Like to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Virtual console has officially begun. By the time we get official VC, hopefully we'll already have a full NeoGeo library.
I should be picking this up soon. I'm gotta work on my "mostly melee" score.
Such a solid action game, wish we get more games like this. You hear me Capcom and Konami, we need arcade quality games on the eShop.
This was actually the first the first game I downloaded on the switch on launch day and I have no regrets it's an awesome game
"based on the arcade MVS edition rather than the AES home version" The AES home version of Shock Troopers doesn't exist!
No mention of the alternate paths? It changes the game every time you play it. Really makes it a new experience every time.
But I'm fairly biased. This is probably my favorite Neo Geo game. The sequel is nowhere near as good.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...