Ghost Squad

GHOST Squad is a Light Gun Game developed by Sega's AM2 division and released in arcades in 2004 and on the Wii in 2007.

You're a top-secret American squad to defend and exterminate terrorist threats.

Now go shoot terrorists.

Now has a sequel, Operation G.H.O.S.T.


 * Awesome but Impractical: Shotguns, particularly in hostage segments. Also, the weapon unlocked at level 99 is a 100-bullet rifle with moderate shot penetration...that takes several seconds to reload.
 * Also averts Revolvers Are Just Better - Sure, they are, but the magazine size and damage, compared to some of the assault rifles, is wimpy.
 * Awesome Yet Practical: The TR14 machinegun and SPR11 "sniper" rifle, both of which have high penetration capability. As in, you can shoot an enemy through a solid wall, a tree, or a Rhino metal box.
 * Anachronism Stew: The ABG1 crossbow. Yes, a crossbow, in a game featuring pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, and even machine guns. It's also a Joke Weapon because arrows don't travel fast like bullets do.
 * Bad Export for You: Zig-zagged. While American arcades started out using the cardless machines because people liked to jam coins into the card slots, they were later replaced with the "Evolution" machines, with all of the content available from the start.
 * Bloodless Carnage
 * Bonus Feature Failure: Turning the difficulty level for a mission past 8 is actually detrimental to your score, in part because enemies take more hits to die now, resulting in less Quick Shots and Medals.
 * Character Level: The carded and Wii versions of the game have you gain levels by playing. Subverted in that the levels only affect what weapons and costumes you can use; it has no effect on the gameplay itself.
 * Difficulty Levels: You can adjust the difficulty on a per-mission basis, from level 1 to 4 (normal cardless arcade version), 16 (carded arcade version and Evolution), or 20 (Wii version). Changing the difficulty determines how many shots an enemy needs to die, the placement of enemies, how often they fire killing shots, which routes you can take, among other things.
 * Disc One Nuke: The SPR11. It's an early-obtained weapon but has ludicrous penetration and a burst-firing option, making it a good weapon to use until you get either the TR14 or, if you hate it because the TR14 has become abused by noobs and spammers, the CPG7.
 * Escort Mission: Several optional segments have you protecting your allies from enemy fire or preventing enemies from opening fire on hostages and Secret Service agents that are trying to escape. They're not too hard to fail.
 * Fun with Acronyms: Global Humanitarian Operations and Special Tactics.
 * Harder Than Hard: Mission levels 17-20 in the Wii version. Levels 5 and up for those used to the 4-level version.
 * Hold the Line: A few segments require you to prevent enemies from entering a particular point until the time runs out.
 * Hostage Spirit Link - You lose one life. Kill too many, and you fail the segment.
 * It's a Wonderful Failure: What happens if you fail the last objective of a mission.
 * Life Meter: Instead of lives (like most Light Gun Games), you get a four-segment health meter. Certain hazards, as well as being shot while wearing body armor, will take off a fraction of a segment. Regular shots will still take off a whole segment.
 * Missile Lock On: The boss fight against the helicopter in the Mansion mission equips the player with rocket launchers. Each player has a crosshair that will slowly converge on the target the longer it's aimed at, together with the usual rising beeps and lock-on prompt.
 * Quick Time Event - Knife fights, the first boss battle.
 * Shout-Out: One of the costumes is based on a character from Virtua Cop. The Guardian and Guardian II (the default weapons of the VC series) are available too, but by this game's standards, they're crap, with the lack of penetration not even making up for the fact they're pistols and a 14-bullet mag.
 * Sniping Mission: Missions 1 and 3 have sniping segments...with a crappy sniper rifle that must be reloaded after every shot. Mission 2 requires you to headshot the boss without missing reloading (which means each player gets ONE shot in multiplayer) to complete it.
 * Updated Rerelease: The Evolution machines and the Wii port. The evolution machines have all the content available from the start, as well as having a hidden ending where  The Wii port is basically the carded machine for the home, except with online leaderboards and even more difficulty levels.
 * Wire Dilemma: One segment of mission 1 has you defuse a bomb by cutting a red wire, yellow wire, and blue wire in the proper order. Not very hard on lower levels (unless you have very bad short-term memory or accidentally skip the part of your CO's speech that reveals the wire order), which give you as many as 15 seconds, but later levels give you as few as 3 seconds.