I went into Air Twister fairly blind. Despite its release last year on Apple Arcade, all I knew was that it was a rail shooter from game designer Yu Suzuki. That alone was enough to garner some interest. Suzuki’s Space Harrier is generally regarded as one of the early progenitors of the third person rail shooter genre. Once I actually booted up Air Twister, I was hit with surprise after surprise. While it stumbles plenty along the way, I couldn’t help but enjoy the bizarre insanity it presents at every turn.

At its core, Air Twister very much feels like a spiritual sequel to Space Harrier. You play as an inexplicably floating woman with a laser blasting crossbow. Holding down the A button allows you to lock onto multiple enemies before firing a series of homing shots with ZR, while a quick press of the ZR button will fire a single unguided shot straight ahead. If you’ve played classic Sega sprite-scaling rail shooters you’ll feel right at home here. The flying and shooting both feel good, if extremely basic. That’s probably the greatest knock against Air Twister. From a purely gameplay focused perspective, it doesn’t evolve much beyond its inspirations.

This doesn’t mean Air Twister is completely devoid of any depth, it is just found outside of the primary gameplay experience. After your first game over you’ll be kicked back to a menu jam packed with content. The most crucial thing on this menu is the Adventure Map which acts as a sort of skill tree. Here you’ll spend points earned from downing enemies to increase your maximum hit points, unlock special perks, and fill out your wardrobe for customizing the protagonist. To be clear, you don’t need to upgrade your character to finish the game. This is a true arcade rail shooter at its core, not an RPG, so skill is king. That being said, exploring this truly massive upgrade tree does make even a failed run feel like progress. Beyond the upgrades are also a variety of other bonus modes, detailed lore entries, and more. What you won't find is a level select or continue option should you fall in battle. A game over means starting over from stage one, granted you’ll have any new upgrades you’ve bought in the interim. By modern standards I suppose you could call it a roguelite.

Oh and I suppose I should mention that Air Twister has the soundtrack of a prog-rock-opera. It caught me a little off guard as I started the first level only to be met with an original soundtrack by Dutch prog-rock artist Valensia. It takes some getting used to but Air Twister just commits to this strange vibe that feels very old school Sega. The only downside is that several of the songs get used multiple times, which lessens the impact of the otherwise constantly changing stage variety, and gives the game a somewhat deceptive feeling of repetition.

At the end of the day, Air Twister is not a particularly long or difficult rail shooter. It took me three runs to reach the end of its 12 stages. The upgrade system does make replaying through old stages easier and easier with each attempt. Still I felt as though I ran out of game long before I’d unlocked even half of the upgrades. It is almost as if Air Twister has a lot of secondary depth in its systems that isn’t really supported by its short simple campaign. That being said, even while being highly aware of these flaws I still had a really good time playing through it. Everything about Air Twister is bizarre and often flawed, but I can’t say it isn’t fun.