 S... S... N... S... D... Robert wanted me to take a closer look at some top-down shoot-'em-ups, so let's take a look at one that's been a bit under-appreciated over the years in Firepower 2000. Or Super Swiv, as it's known in PAL regions. This is actually the third game in a series. Okay, not quite a literal series, just an instance where it's a lot of the same developers, and one game inspired the next and so on. The first game is Silkworm, a side-scrolling shooter for the arcades that was ported to home computer systems, and the NES. and the next game being SWIV, or SWIV, or Special Weapons Interdiction Vehicle, which also was released for home computer formats and eventually made its way to the Game Boy Color. One game inspired the next, and yeah, as far as top-down shooters go, Firepower 2000 is pretty inspired. It's easy to just lump all games like this into the same category, but there are a few things that make this one stand out. For instance, at the start of the game, you get a choice of vehicle, a helicopter, or a jeep. The helicopter is faster and able to reach any part of the screen without running into much, but it can only fire forward. The jeep fires in eight directions, which is really nice, but it can run into enemies, buildings, or other obstacles on the ground, but it does at least have the ability to jump, however. Both are easy enough to control, but they allow you to approach the game in different ways depending on how you like to play. The game also has you switching vehicles in the middle of certain levels, like a fighter jet or a speedboat, but to the game's credit, they all essentially have the same feel. So, if there's two vehicles to start with, then you know what that means. It's two-player co-op. On certain Super Nintendo shoot-em-ups that have this feature, your mileage can vary because of the infamous SNES slowdown that can randomly show up here and there in games like the Perotius series, or in other instances where they just made the backgrounds as bland and as repetitive as possible like in Stright Gunner STG. Firepower 2000 looks spectacular and has a consistent pace with minimal slowdown, even with the second player occupying the screen, so if you're looking for a good, chaotic, multiplayer shoot-em-up, you can't go wrong here. Another thing that makes Firepower 2000 stand out is that it's not just a static vertical scroll. There's some extra room to explore horizontally in certain stages, and certainly when a game is this freaking crazy, as you can clearly see here, you'll need all the real estate you can get. Some people write these games off as too difficult, but it's really not all that different from other shoot-em-ups of the time. Just stay toward the bottom of the screen and let everything come to you, and don't feel like you have to shoot everything. Just concentrate on dodging instead of aiming for enemies, and you'll have a better chance at progressing further into the game. Helping curb this difficulty is the range of weapons you can use. There are five you can flip from, using the L and R buttons, like the typical machine gun that can evolve into a spread gun, a plasma gun, a laser, an ionic weapon that splits in two when it hits something, and my favorite, the flamethrower. It's so great. There are also four special weapons you can use, which are a range of different bombs and missiles. I gotta take a moment to compliment the sound design in this game. Listen, I'm easy to please. Give me a game where you make stuff go boom, and when the boom happens, make it really sound like a boom. Yeah, just like that. Any game that takes the time to get stuff like that right is well worth playing today, in my opinion. Firepower 2000 also received a Genesis port two years later titled Mega Swiv, and the quote-unquote series continued on the PC with Swiv 3D in 1996, but I admit I have not had the chance to play either of those two games. But yeah, Firepower 2000 is a quality title. I understand that some people may be put off by the difficulty here, and yeah, this is not the most accessible game for sure. There's six levels here, and they're all very long and can feel endless at times. But I mean, sometimes you just want to play a game where you blow stuff up, and there's certain 16-bit games that just get it right, and Firepower 2000 is one of them.