Contributing to the game’s problems is the move to widescreen. While previous members of the 194X family corridor the player through narrow assault courses of whizzing planes and streaking bullets thanks to a vertical screen orientation, Joint Strike’s levels feel roomy and under-populated.

The diminutive planes, ships and tanks that make up the game’s vehicles are swamped by empty space, inflicting a lack of pace and urgency, a feel that’s worsened by your plane’s ambling speed. While the odd stray bullet will catch you out, the enemy formations seem more designed for show than to wrong-foot your maneuvers.

Moreover, Backbone has borrowed ideas from other examples in the genre and, with them, diluted the original game’s tight focus. The closer your plane is to the enemy ship you’re destroying, the more points you earn, a half-hearted attempt to introduce risk/reward to an otherwise straightforward scoring mechanic.

The use of a 3D engine to paint what’s essentially a 2D point of view might have made financial sense but aesthetically it’s a mistake. Bland, expressionless backgrounds are punctuated with a too-small selection of enemy ships. Boss ships, while boasting multiple parts that can be destroyed piece by piece, are so uninspired as to be anonymous.

Not even Norihiko Hibino’s score can inject a sense of drama or occasion into proceedings. In the end, what emerges is a remake that’s peculiarly of its time: a western-style, casual gaming aping of the Japanese shoot ’em up that’s less homage than banal dilution, and the game sucks the life and vibrancy from its rich lineage.

Softening the edges of a notoriously cranky genre might seem like a way to appeal to gaming’s newer, less attentive and persistent demographics, but here all it has done is to erase the lines that once defined a classic.

Verdict: 4/10

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