Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 14 hours ago

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Sonic Wings, known as Aero Fighters in the West, is a shoot em up released by Video Systems for the Super Famicom in 1993. It is a port of the arcade shooter Sonic Wings, originally released in arcades in Japan in 1992. The SNES version is known for being one of the rarest games on the system as it was released in extremely limited quantities. The Japanese version is much more common.

This game is notable for being developed by many of the programmers that went on to found Psikyo, famous for the Gunbird and Strikers 1945 games. In fact, the gameplay here is very similar to the earliest Psikyo shmups, particularly Samurai Aces and the original Gunbird. The stages are short but intense and the trademark Psikyo fast bullets and patterns are here in their infancy. You also have a decent amount of ships, as you get a total of 8 between both P1 and P2 sides. Each side gets a different selection, which is a bit strange for console gamers but not too unusual by arcade standards.

Another similarity between this and later Psikyo games is how your runs are structured. The first three stages here are randomized in terms of order, though a particular character will always get those particular stages to start. After that, the order of the stages is set in stone. Also, you have two loops in the arcade original as well as the Super Famicom version, another Psikyo tradition. However, the SNES version lacks the second loop because that release used a smaller cartridge as a cost-cutting measure.

As far as difficulty goes, it is believed by some that this version is actually harder than the arcade original. I've seen multiple shmup players more skilled than me point this out elsewhere. While I still haven't played the arcade original yet, the one thing that definitely has an impact on difficulty is the rank system. The longer you live, the nastier it gets in terms of bullet speeds, and it gets nasty by Stage 5 unless you die prior to that. I decided to suicide before the Stage 4 boss because of that. Also, while the first four stages aren't very hard, you do need to route more by the time you get to Stage 5.

The final stage of each loop is by far the hardest. Not only are the bullets fast by this point, the mini-boss is harder than any of the stage bosses prior and you have a possibility of two last bosses. You either get a skull named Pandora after fighting multiple phases of the space shuttle/golden capsule or you get the more difficult Osaru, a giant ape who also appears in later Sonic Wings games. Osaru is by far the harder fight and that is the one I got. After hours of practice, I'm pretty sure that the last boss is determined at random, but I could be wrong.

I did not last long into the second loop, but the second loop seems much more fair than a Psikyo second loop from the limited time I've spent playing it.

Overall, this is definitely worth playing if you want a great vertical shmup for the Super Famicom/SNES. It's also pretty faithful to the arcade original despite the 4:3 aspect ratio.

#sonicwings #superfamicom #shmups #retrogaming #1cc

00:00 Intro
00:32 Stage 1
02:20 Stage 2
03:49 Stage 3
06:18 Stage 4
08:21 Stage 5
10:03 Stage 6
12:18 Stage 7
14:42 Loop 2