Ah, the arcade shooter. There’s something about the mammoth size of the arcade shooter’s cabinet, coupled with the garish colors of its fake pistols and the horribly scratched screen that brings any gamer old enough to remember arcades back to their youths. For those that fondly remember walking into an arcade, pockets heavy with change, only to emerge a mere 15 minutes later with Time Crisis or House of the Dead having eaten their entire game budget will find Ghost Squad an enjoyable, albeit brief, romp back through time.

There’s not a lot of story to worry about in Ghost Squad. You play as a member of the titular anti-terrorist organization, sent on various missions to free hostages, defuse bombs, protect the president and deal copious amounts of hot lead to the various members of the Indigo Wolves, the game’s well populated enemy organization. The game consists of three missions, divided into various sub-sections, with branching paths throughout. You’ll storm a mountain resort, shoot up Air Force One and finally stage a daring jungle rescue, complete with a gun fueled river race. Imagine every action movie from the 90’s compressed into roughly 20 minutes and you have the basic idea.

No, that’s not a typo, as 20 minutes is about all it will take you to get through Ghost Squad’s three missions. Thankfully, there are plenty of reasons to go through the missions more than once. The branching paths in each mission means you’ll need to complete each mission multiple times to be able to clear every stage, and as the game allows you to progress to the next mission, even if you’ve failed part of the current mission, being able to complete a run through without failure may require multiple tries. Thankfully your scores for each run through stack, which brings us to your reward for continued play, unlockables. Along with various costumes for your squad members, including, oddly enough, a panda suit, 25 weapons are available, ranging from pistols to shotguns to submachine guns.

The various weapons all handle differently and finding the right tool for the job is essential for surviving the higher difficulty levels. Finally, playing the game through multiple times unlocks the incredibly strange Ninja and Paradise modes. In Ninja mode, playable in the game’s local multiplayer mode, the Ghost Squad is outfitted as ninjas, complete with an unending supply of throwing stars, and face off against various ninjas, samurai and killer geisha girls. Paradise Mode is even stranger with bikini clad women standing in for the terrorists and the Ghost Squad’s guns replaced with water pistols and their knives replaced with bananas.

Yes, that’s right, bananas.

The wacky party modes as well as the over the top dialog and colorful antagonists all combine to give Ghost Squad a very tongue-in-cheek aesthetic. It’s obvious that this game doesn’t take itself very seriously, which makes it’s brief length and decidedly unimpressive graphics much easier to accept. It’s not that the graphics are bad; however they’re exactly the same as you saw in the arcades when the game debuted four years ago.

From a control standpoint, the game has an impressive number of options, and fully supports the Wii Zapper for those that can’t play a light gun game without a huge plastic weapon in their hands. In a surprising twist, you can also dual wield with a Wiimote in each hand in the single player game, or invite John McClane over for some two player, dual wielding action. Yippee-kiy-yay indeed. The Wiimote works quite well as a light gun, however there is some compensation needed for the fact that the sensor bar probably isn’t directly in front of you. The aiming can get a little wonky as you approach the top or bottom of the screen however spending some time with the game’s calibration feature will remove most problems. For those that need a little extra help, you can choose to turn the aiming reticles on at the expense of fewer points. The Wii Zapper works well with the game, and stirs memories of light gun cabinets of yore, complete with off screen shooting/shaking for reloading. Ultimately, the use of it over the Wiimote comes down to personal preference.

Given how little time it would take someone to make it through one run Ghost Squad, it would be easier to discount the game as simply not being worth the money, however to do so would be at the cost of missing out on a seriously fun arcade experience. The branching paths, various difficulty levels, ability to unlock weapons and costumes and various training and party modes all come together to provide an experience that, while not as long as your average action shooter, provide much more than 20 minutes of fun. The fact that it retails for around 30 bucks helps even more to set those value expectations. If you like shooting terrorists who look like they walked off the set of “The A Team”, and really who doesn’t, then Ghost Squad will provide plenty of enjoyable, mindless fun.