Thanks to Clear River Games for the review code for the Base Game

Title: Operation NIGHT STRIKERS
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $24.99
Release Date: 08/07/2025

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Prelude

M2 is back with another compilation, this one being the next Taito compilation to follow their Rayz one. But instead of a singular franchise, you have two games from the Operation Wolf trilogy, similar genre game Space Gun, and Night Striker, because why not. Four games in total, with most of their home versions via an optional CS version DLC. Unfortunately, PC Engine Operation Wolf got banished to becoming a dreaded timed Amazon Prime Day exclusive.

Presentation

M2 compilations/ports can vary in all kinds of ways when it comes to presentation and bonus content. Some have tons of display options, while others have very few. Operation Night Strikers is in the latter camp, with a pretty simple set of display sizes to choose from, some very generic wallpapers (though each game does have one representing the border of the actual arcade machine, which is pretty neat), and a very lame CRT filter that’s akin to just slapping lines on the screen and calling it a day.

There’s also a sad lack of bonus material here to look at. Each game does have a manual to tell you how to play, but not a single bit of scanned reference material. No Arcade flyers, no advertisements, no key art, nothing of the sort, and that was pretty disappointing. The Darius Collections were light in this regard too, and it’s disappointing to see Taito keep up that habit here.

Still, this is another M2 set to offer a ton of visual gadgets to cover your screen with, and they all get the job done pretty well across the arcade titles. Lots of handy information present at all times, and for Night Striker in particular it’s especially useful for finding out what your routing strategy should be. These tend to remain the best aspect of M2 reissues, and thankfully that is the biggest benefit to carry over to Operation Night Strikers.

When it comes to emulation quality, M2 nails it yet again, with no complaints from me here. All four arcade titles sound just like they should, including the weird sound effect-focused nature of the European version of Night Striker, the voices in Operation Wolf/Thunderbolt, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Night Striker also has a remastered OST to choose from, which sounds great. The only bug with the base game I noticed was how exiting a game will sometimes cause the main menu UI to become devoid of sound effects, so hopefully that minor bug gets fixed soonish.

Gameplay

We have a compilation of four arcade games here, but unlike some other M2 ports, there’s nothing when it comes to cool manual/box scans, not even with the CS DLC. (which I bought to support the company, but the contents of which won’t factor in my review) You do have plenty of gadget toggles for said games as I noted earlier, but when it comes to bonuses besides the usual gadgets, save states and online leaderboards, there’s not as much as some of M2’s other works. The Light Gun games do have alternative easy modes for you to play, but otherwise you just have the usual regional variants for each arcade title.

So into the four games we go, with a lot of shooting.

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OPERATION WOLF– This lightgun based shooter is absurdly popular, and after playing through it in full for the first time ever, I struggle to see why. That doesn’t mean the game lacks fun, as there’s still a decent bit to be found here!

You must go through several stages of action, trying to take down as many enemies as you possibly can before they shoot you. You have your normal gun, powered by clips of ammunition, along with a small set of grenades, which help clear out a big part of the screen when thrown, and are rarely dropped by enemies. The stages are really short, so they won’t take too much of your time, so how the game counters this to prevent you from finishing Operation Wolf in no time at all is by completely flooding the screen with enemies. Randomly.

Yes, randomly. Memorization isn’t a skill you can really use here , since if the game starts to ramp things up you’ll be dealing with a ludicrous amount of foes popping up and having a pretty tough time trying to take them all out before they take you down. Thus, what starts as a pretty decent gameplay loop quickly devolves into absolute chaos, with a ton of the Arcade quarter desperation showing itself with this one. Still, there are fun moments of strategy, such as rescuing hostages or trying to avoid hitting passerby while targeting the enemies, so I can see why a lot of people pumped quarters into Operation Wolf even if it gets unfair.

Honestly, I’d recommend you play this on the Easy version, but that version does the complete opposite, giving you so much of an advantage that 1CCing becomes a cakewalk. it’s just a shame this game wasn’t particularly balanced well back then, but it did spark a bunch of copycats and similar games, even by Taito themselves. Nevertheless, this is a very average shooter, dragged down an awful lot by randomness and really cruel difficulty spikes.

The default controls with a normal controller and virtual cursor are pretty solid and get the job done for controlling these light gun games, (though I always remapped the shot/bomb buttons to the back triggers, which made them feel even better) but two extra options are here to help provide some attempts at replicating the Arcade light gun feel a little more closely, and I was able to give one of them a spin.

If you so choose, you can use the Joy-Con itself as a fake light gun and aim with motion controls, and with the original Switch’s Joy-Cons it works just OK. I have always despised motion controls, but cursor aiming in light-gun style games is the one aspect I usually tolerate them for, and with the original Joy-Cons they get the job done. It still feels rather sloppy and I vastly prefer buttons if a game lets me use them, but if you like the motion controls and have the original Switch, you should be mildly amused by them here.

On the Switch 2 and Joy-Con 2 however, the responsiveness of these motion controls improve substantially, to the point I was able to use them in tabletop mode and was surprised by just how smooth they felt. I still prefer buttons overall just due to them being the main control scheme for 99% of games I play, but I was honestly gobsmacked by how good it felt, taking a decent motion control experience on Switch 1 and elevating it on Switch 2 enough to the point I could easily see myself trying some runs of these games with the Joy-Con 2.

Lastly, there’s a mouse option, and this was the one I was unable to test in any way as I do not own a single USB mouse to speak of. I was hoping maybe M2 was able to slip in some Joy-Con 2 mouse support, but alas, they do not function like that in this compilation, so you’ll have to find a mouse somewhere. Still, with a typical two button mouse, I can definitely see it being the definitive way to play due to faster aiming alone, and not having any risk of sloppy aiming from motion controls.

OPERATION THUNDERBOLT– The sequel to Operation Wolf, released a year later and now with co-op. You once again aim a crosshair and use your normal weapon and grenades, except now you have a few different perspectives in the stages, with the addition of going forward towards an objective rather than just horizontally. There’s still hostages to save, enemies to shoot down, and tons of chaos to deal with, moreso than last time! In a weird way, I both liked Thunderbolt more than Wolf, and kinda didn’t.

The action in general feels more frantic, because there’s just flat out more going on all at once. Racking up those points, shooting little details for more, and trying to catch airborne clips of ammunition is all fine and dandy, and compared to Wolf I found this one to be a lot more engaging in that regard, especially since the game didn’t feel nearly as short as Wolf, though it isn’t much longer. Just like in Wolf you also have segments of stages focusing on rescuing hostages or defending them from enemies, and these also are key to getting bonuses and not just wasting all of your ammunition. If Wolf kept you on your toes most of the time, Thunderbolt will keep you on your toes without being able to take a breather, and I’m not exactly sure that’s a good thing.

With more enemies and a whole lot of stuff flying at you, even trying to be as swift as possible and accurate as can be won’t be enough to prevent you from taking damage; especially in the later half of the game, where the idea of “balance” goes completely out the window and you will absolutely be pushed to continue like a typical quarter muncher. A Co-Op partner can help an awful lot in this aspect, but it sure seemed as if Taito didn’t hesitate to use that extra arcade power to throw more enemies at you to drain your wallet.

Even the easy mode M2 made isn’t immune to this fact, since while it significantly tones down the difficulty, you’ll still be dealing with a ton of trickery just to see the end of the game, let alone nab that true ending. While I ended up liking the scoring a bit more than Operation Wolf and thus replayed this one way more frequently, this still is a gimmick game mainly balanced around taking your money rather than building a key strategy.

NIGHT STRIKER– The true crown jewel of this collection, and the one game that isn’t a light gun shooter. Rather, Night Striker is a rail shooter mixed with a little bit of vehicle driving. And I mean a little bit, because the car can fly around the entire screen Space Harrier style and shoot down foes, and even drive over water when need be.

Still, with splitting paths and multiple end routes, it always gave me minor Outrun vibes to mix in with the obvious Space Harrier and Darius (another route splitting game), and compared to those two Sega games, Night Striker is vastly superior in a lot of ways. For starters, you have the absolute perfection of a soundtrack by Zuntata, with the aforementioned remastered OST as another way to get more outta the great soundtrack, so no matter how you fare in this game, you’ll still be able to get a kick out of some of the best Arcade music Taito has ever put out.

Then you just have the sheer simplicity of it all and how well everything works. You move and you shoot, that’s it. No special bomb attack, no multiple weapons, no power pickups, nothing changes at all until the final stage of a route, where the game will shift things up a bit and make your vehicle transform into something else to give that last stage a flashy finish. You might be on a motorbike with limited vertical mobility from jumping, or get assistance from an extra aircraft for double firepower, or just ditch the wheels and take to the skies; there’s just enough to make finding each end route worth your time, even with some minor repetition in the other stages.

Speaking of repetition, as great as Night Striker is, and as much as the game rewards memorization, (making progress to a 1CC, especially with the routing system, feel very possible and satisfying if you manage to pull it off) there are some stages that have pretty similar themes to other levels, so you might end up in more than one tunnel stage or more than one sea stage during a run through. Enemy formations and bosses are different to still make these levels semi-unique, but I do wish they managed to go all out and give every zone a unique level theme. Still, the fast pace of each level and the exciting speed of the vehicle both help to make Night Striker super addicting, and without a doubt the crown jewel of this collection. It has excellent music and routing possibilities ala Outrun or Darius, and it has fast paced action that rewards memorization like Space Harrier, and that to me, helps to make this one a wonderful match made in heaven.

Just do be wary, as while I am not covering the CS pack as part of this review, I did pick it up for my own enjoyment and found completing a route in the Mega CD version of Night Striker just hard crashes the entire game to the Switch/Switch 2 home screen. I don’t know why it does this, but the arcade game is totally fine and I had no issues playing that version and clearing multiple routes. So maybe be careful not to buy that CS pack until they fix that bug.

SPACE GUN– We have another Light Gun game to go through here, this time revolving around a bunch of aliens. Space station acts up, you go in, find aliens and have to rescue people before escaping and trying to figure out what the heck is going on, pretty typical setup.

Here you have unlimited ammunition for your default weapon, now only limited by a cooldown meter, so if you just keep holding the fire button the whole time you’ll eventually have to break long enough for the meter to refill. Now instead of bombs, you have a whopping four weapons to choose from via limited ammunition, along with the ability to backtrack in some rare circumstances, and take alternate paths throughout the stages, giving Space Gun a bit of extra replay value. (although the JP version of Operation Wolf does have a level select and different endings, these features are worldwide across versions)

There’s also a lot more hostage situations in Space Gun, and more depth to the combat, with being able to target the alien limbs to disable their attacks, which helps to keep you on your toes more. You could just act like a reckless defense force and shoot every hostage near the aliens in sight and ignore the enemy limbs, or you could actually focus on saving them for helpful bonus points and reaching a new high-score, which adds a slight layer of scorechasing fun. Like in Thunderbolt, there’s local Co-Op this time around, which just leads to the whole experience being a fun ride you can credit feed through with a friend if nothing else about Space Gun does it for you.

The four alternate weapons also come in real handy during the boss fights, since unlike Operation Wolf, there are a lot more of them, and a good chunk of them are pretty fun, especially when experimenting with the different weapon types. Do you try to burn them alive with a flame attack, or screen clear with a bomb even at risk to the hostages? Or you could just freeze everything and effortlessly shatter swarms of enemies, or piece through them with a powerful crescent shaped shot.

Yes, Space Gun still has a lot of enemies trying to overwhelm you, and they can even be slightly spongy, (though the JP version is far, far worse in this regard, and just makes the whole ordeal a bit annoying) but the extra variety in Space Gun helped it to be more fun as an overall experience than Operation Wolf or Thunderbolt, and I actually felt as if I could memorize enough to improve my capabilities in future playthrough attempts. Of Taito’s light gun games, I almost never hear about this one, and it’s a big shame since i’ve had quite a lot of fun with it, and it grew on me to easily become my favorite of the three shooting games. It doesn’t hate me as much!

Conclusion

In the end, I found this M2 set to be a little bit on the weaker side compared to their excellence with Rayz and Darius. Space Gun and Night Striker are both excellent games, with the latter having great score chasing opportunities to it, but the other two are pretty simple or outright unfair to the point of total frustration, although Thunderbolt’s Co-Op mode is still pretty fun and worth doing.

I know Operation Wolf is beloved by a lot of people, but I found the action of Thunderbolt to be far more engaging, slightly more fair, and a lot more fun. (though if you want the CS stuff, for the love of god, avoid that SNES port) Still, three out of four of the games are pretty darn samey, and while Thunderbolt at least keeps you on your toes the entire time, Space Gun offering some fun weapon variety and Wolf does an OK job at being entertaining outside of the difficulty, Night Striker remains the MVP of this set, just by being an excellent game that mixes the best from several other Arcade classics into an incredible rail shooter that’s the most replayable of the bunch. It’s just a shame the overall package doesn’t have as much of the M2 charm as some of their other collections did, and it’s ever so slightly buggy in a way their other sets are not.

I give Operation Night Strikers a 6 out of 10.