Mechanized Attack is a manic, one or two-player lightgun shooter that was released into arcades by SNK in 1989.

On the face of it you could argue that Mechanized Attack is a clone of Taito‘s 1987 hit, Operation Wolf. You could also argue that it’s not a very good clone.

As the title suggests: you’re not fighting against humans, but against a robot army that look like humans, that have somehow acquired (or built) a load of tanks, harrier jump jets, helicopters, ships, boats, submarines and other military hardware to bombard you with. And bombard you they do…

As a single-player game: you’ll have to keep putting in coins to continue, because your health won’t last very long. You might last longer in a two-player cooperative game, but both players have to be fast and accurate to do that, because there’s so much incoming fire.

In total there are five main missions, with the occasional, shorter bonus mission in-between. A map of the island you’re attacking is displayed between stages, to show your progress.

The graphics are decent, and the target practice is somewhat compelling, but the gameplay is overwhelming to the point of it becoming tedious. Little nuance seems to have been designed into Mechanized Attack and you’re basically just shooting anything that moves. And since most on-screen targets zip by quickly, or only appear for a second or two, it feels like you’re playing war on fast forward…

If Mechanized Attack had been a bit slower-paced, and the attack waves better designed and organised, then it could have been a fun shooter, but as it stands it’s a game that fails to pinpoint what made Operation Wolf fun to play and as a result becomes stale quickly. You might want to play through it in MAME, just to see the relatively cool 2D graphics, but Mechanized Attack is not a game anyone will rave about.

An NES version was released in 1990, and I believe it’s also currently (at the time of writing) available on the Antstream service.

More: Mechanized Attack on Wikipedia