With an advanced machine gun controller and story following an elite anti-terrorist squad, Ghost Squad takes the aesthetics of tactical military shooters like Rainbow Six and brings it to the arcades. Alongside a simulated recoil, and a firing mode selector Ghost Squad’s controller sports an additional “action” button that performs various contextual actions such as rescuing hostages, destroying mines or parrying knife attacks. Between the varied interactions and tense situations Ghost Squad puts you in, it sells the idea of being an elite soldier able to surgically dismantle the enemy force, but in a high speed arcade package that’s uncommon among tactical shooters. Thankfully, that’s balanced by a hammy, over the top presentation common among SEGA arcade games, keeping it from steering into the ultra serious, propaganda like tone that many similar shooters fall into.
Lightgun technology is often the first association when it comes to arcade gun games, Ghost Squad uses an infrared pointer to track your aim, allowing precise positioning via an on screen cursor. Compared to lightgun shooters, which need to allow a certain amount of leeway to account for imperfect calibration and aim, Ghost Squad allows more precise hitboxes. As a comparison, early entries in House of the Dead--SEGA’s most recognizable lightgun series--have encounters happen at closer range, creating larger targets that allow some imprecision in high tension situations. Ghost Squad has a wider field of view, with targets appearing at longer distances, and as a consequence of its more precise aim, allows it to emphasize headshots as a tactic for fast takedowns.
To show this off, the airplane stage features a hostage situation where the boss uses a human shield, and you only have one chance to land a headshot and take him out. The imprecision of lightgun technology might cause you to accidentally hit the hostage if not precisely calibrated, but because you can see the single point where your bullet will land, landing the shot is almost trivial, with a short timer instead providing the tension for the situation.
Other setpieces break up the pacing and put the technology to good use, with precision sniping sections, a helicopter takedown where you need to continually track it to acquire a lock on, and the aforementioned bomb disarming, hostage restraining, and melee sections where you quickly use the action button to perform context sensitive actions while looking out for enemies. The addition of a second button and pointer controls allows Ghost Squad to break up the typical arcade shooter pacing, and gives you more ways to interact with the world aside from firing a gun.
Don’t let that fool you into thinking that the gunfeel is lacking. Ghost Squad’s gunplay aces both the audiovisual and physical feedback. Shots cause enemies to flinch based on hit location, with the same kind of snappy reactions that made House of the Dead so satisfying. Score popups reward you for quick and precise shots, and environments are littered with destructible objects that turn the area into a mess over the course of a gunfight. The controller itself is heavy, imitating the look of the real life MP5, with punchy, machine gun-like recoil that encourages you to stabilize your aim by pushing the stock against your shoulder. The addition of the action button and firing mode selector give both your hands something to do, and lean into the fantasy of holding a powerful weapon.
The original cabinet ran on the SEGA Chihiro board, an arcade board based on the specs of the Xbox, with the later revision, Ghost Squad Evolution, using the Lindberg arcade board, both which saw titles like Outrun 2 and Virtua Fighter 5 show up on them. The original version had an unlock system that allowed players to use a player card to store save data, with successive plays unlocking new weapons and costumes, and increasing the difficulty of the missions. Evolution added more options, and additionally unlocked weapons, allowing North American players to play with them, since they previously did not have access to the cards used to save data. In my personal experience I also found that Evolution had more responsive cursor tracking, but that could have been due to poor calibration on the original cabinet.
Despite being based on Xbox hardware, Ghost Squad never received a port to the Xbox or other home consoles of the generation, likely due to the difficulty of adapting the IR aiming. The Wii ended up being the one console to bring the game home, with the IR pointer capabilities of the Wiimote providing a perfect substitute. The home version obviously can’t replicate the physical experience of the arcade cabinet, with the Wii controller being absolutely dwarfed by the heft of the gun controller, and lacking the intense mechanical feedback. Paired with a Wii Zapper shell, however, and it does provide a good enough facsimile of the experience to appreciate the unique qualities of Ghost Squad. There’s also no shortage of Wii controller shells with detailed recreations of firearms, including one modeled off the MP5.
The Wii version also finally allows English speaking players to engage with the unlock system, with enough options to keep you playing for hundreds of sessions. Thankfully, the game runs about 20 minutes, keeping the pacing snappy, and preventing fatigue from the constant high tension action. With arcade cabs becoming increasingly uncommon, the Wii version provides a more than suitable replacement for most people, and even outside of original hardware, emulation can replicate most of the experience, with even more pointer precision.
With the tacticool trappings of military shooters, and a campy presentation that lightens the baggage associated with them, Ghost Squad is a perfect demonstration of rail shooter excellence--fantastically paced, varied, and making excellent use of its technology to break out of the usual genre trappings. Its mechanical precision makes further playthroughs more rewarding, and it can be completed in only a little more time than it takes to read this article.
Just a few more images to illustrate the differences and similarities between the Sega Zillion laser tag toy and the Sega Master System Light Phaser.
Most changes to the laser tag gun were made to bring it much closer to the one seen in the first few episodes of the Red Photon Zillion anime. Such was the co-operation between Sega and Tatsunoko that it’s more or less entirely screen accurate.
Did you know the designer of the NES has said that bundling the console with the Light Gun was a big reason why it sold so well in the USA? In case you missed his point, he added, "America loves guns."
Source: tinyurl.com/y938rho7
More NES Facts: youtube.com/watch?v=pLPPsxjzRnc
