I discovered that you can’t judge Aegis Wing fairly if you stop with single-player. In multiplayer you can merge your ships at will, and one player steers while the other acts as gunner (they can fire in any direction). It appears all four players can merge into one blob, though I don’t know what the extras do.

Anyway, this is an excellent way of dealing with the confusion that results when two people are playing a shooter at the same time - just let the best bullet-dodger steer for everyone, and the others can cover his ass. I would argue that this is the only shooter I’ve played where multiplayer works well.

Well, wait, that’s not exactly true. Shidoshi alerted me to WarTech: Senko no Ronde, which recently dropped to $10 at GameStop. It’s a weird hybrid of shooter and fighting game, like Psychic Force but with more bullet dodging. It’s a great concept that I’d like to see done again (but maybe a little better next time). Well worth $10, though.