We have seen some quite impressive titles appear for the Gameboy Color recently; Cannon Fodder which not only showed that it was possible to convert the old Amiga game to an 8 bit platform, but even improved on the original - and Mr Driller converted directly from the Playstation with both bold bright graphics and hectic, immensively addictive puzzle action.SWIV does the same near impossible feat as these titles, but for a completely different genre - the vertically scrolling shoot'em up. There has been a lack of shoot'em ups for the Gameboy Color. 1942 was a bleak attempt with slow graphics, uninspiring sound and was, honestly, quite dull to play. Plugging SWIV into your Gameboy makes a change to all that - the feeling can best be described as the one of having an arcade machine from the later half of the 80s in your hand. The graphics are highly polished, with quick and smooth animation. The music is some of the best ever heard on the Gameboy and is well in par with the heights of the SID Music from the days of the days of the Commodore 64.
As soon as you start playing it is apparent that SWIV is a thoroughly made conversion. You notice such small details as the rotors of your helicopter rotating in sync with the music, that the game is equipped with autofire and that loosing one life down-grades your weapons rather than making you loose all your add-ons. Details that taken together sum up to a game that it is very easy to appreciate... so good that it is highly probable that this is the best vertical scroller that will ever be made for the Gameboy Color.
So, isn't there anything that could have been improved in SWIV? Well, compared to the full motion video intro sequence of Cannon Fodder some static images with music are not very impressive; but then that is more or less how the arcade machines from these years looked like... Also, some of the weapons don't look very different... but except from that, any critic against the game is a critic of the genre as a whole, rather than against the game. But then, shoot'em ups have never pretended to be mind boggling, but just simple pure fun action - and that is exactly what SWIV is about.