One year ago, Air Twister hit Apple Arcade and offered up something rarely seen on the service – an experience that was very much like something you would have actually gotten in an arcade. Despite the name of the service, it really didn’t have anything quite like that with its blend of many different genres and almost nothing feeling like an arcade game that was given life in the modern era. Yu Suzuki created Space Harrier for SEGA over 35 years ago and returned to the sky-shooting genre with Air Twister with his newer YSNET company and it truly felt like a modern incarnation of Space Harrier, which is fantastic because there hasn’t been anything like that in decades.
The Dreamcast era brought with it Planet Harriers in arcades, but that never got a home conversion and as arcade ports became lost to time due to arcades themselves dwindling in global popularity, it felt like there may never been something that filled that void in the market. Air Twister managed to do that while showing that what’s old can truly be new again because of the lack of anything like it. Air Twister’s combat is very much in line with Space Harrier with a bit of Panzer Dragoon mixed in with multi-target aiming, but it’s a combination that works wonderfully together and creates a memorable experience.
One of Air Twister’s greatest accomplishments is its soundtrack, which is epic and right in line with Space Harrier in terms of being stuck in your head after playing while having more depth to the music a la Panzer Dragoon. It’s a joy to play the game and in every way it needs to succeed it does and now it will find a whole new audience on PC and consoles. Not having it tied to Apple hardware, whether it’s a phone, tablet, computer or TV streaming device helps the potential audience and because it can run on anything, the potential PC audience for it should be large. It’ll be coming to the Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series and PC – with Sony and Nintendo’s platforms getting a physical release thanks to ININ Games.
Pre-orders for the physical edition will begin on July 18 and if you ever loved either Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon, you’re going to be in for a treat because in a lot of ways, this feels like a modern-day version of that gameplay style with more refinement. It’s one of the most fun games in this sub-genre to play and when going back and forth between this game on Apple TV and Panzer Dragoon Orta via the Xbox One last year, I found that Air Twister actually held up better due to the more refined gameplay and I enjoyed the soundtrack more too.
