 In my mind, Netsume is one of the most underappreciated third-party developers out there. Sure, everyone loved Capcom, Konami, Rare, and Squaresoft, but Netsume brought a ton of great SNES titles to the table, like the Paki and Rocky games and Wild Guns, but even on the NES, there's Powerblade 1 and 2, Shatterhand, Shadow of the Ninja, and… Hey, wait a second, this game looks awfully familiar. This looks a lot like a game I looked at a few weeks ago, Forgotten Worlds for Sega Genesis, which was made for the arcade by Capcom and ported by Sega. Despite how similar the games look though, this is a completely different game. It was released as Final Mission in Japan, Action of New York in Europe, and SCAT in the US, or, uh, more specifically, Special Cybernetic Attack Team. I'll take either of those titles over SCAT, but I guess that's what I'll be working with here. As you can see, this game is kind of a shoot-em-up run-and-gun hybrid sort of a thing, probably closer to a shoot-em-up, and while this game may appear to play like Forgotten Worlds, it actually plays more like Section Z. There's no rotating around here, for example. You just fly around the same way as in Section Z, moving in all directions. You can only shoot horizontally, but you have two satellite module things that take care of enemies above and below you, and you can rotate them around and stop them by pressing the A button. The reason I insist on referring to these games as run-and-gun in addition to shoot-em-up is because, well, you are shooting a gun, and the usual array of power-ups here reflect that, like a laser rifle or kind of a grenade launcher. Also once again, like another Natsume title, Shadow of the Ninja, Special Cybernetic Attack Team is co-op, but not only that, you play as two people conspicuously named Arnold and Sigourney. Wow, subtle much. Still, that's pretty cool, and this makes for an awesome co-op game that you can fly through reasonably quickly. One thing I should point out, though, where it says Life 6 right there, that represents how many hits you can take, not how many lives you have. When you die, you start back at the beginning of the level. There's unlimited continues, though. The gameplay is solid, but what makes Special Cybernetic Attack Team stand out, I refuse to say scat. There's all the other stuff, like the visuals and sound design, the dystopian-looking settings in the background are awesome, and the sprites look fantastic. This game may sound kind of generic on paper, but it does not look generic. Best of all, it might be the music. This is some great shit. Listen to that drum sound. Wow, a quality voice sample on NES? That's insane. The only real flaw here isn't a flaw that's unique to this game. It's the typical NES flickering. And this game tends to have quite a bit of it. Real quickly, though, on a personal note, this game looked familiar to me beyond the Forgotten Worlds or Sector Z comparisons, because it's featured in one of the very first Nintendo Power issues I ever owned, complete with huge maps laying out each level. It says stuff like, listen up, if you lose all your life bars, but your partner has more than 8 life bars, he'll give you one bar and you'll stay in the action. Wow, thanks Nintendo Power. So yes, Special Cybernetic Attack Team, or SCAT if you're into that, is a great looking co-op shoot-em-up run-and-gun style game that has a kick-ass soundtrack. I really did not expect to have this much fun with this game, but evidently lots of other people expected to, because the average price on eBay is close to $150. So once again, this is another case where you want to check out this game in whichever way you can, and even if you don't, just go listen to the music. It's frickin' great.