When you start Aero Fighters, you can choose to start the game with either one or two players, or look at the options menu.
Options[edit]
The options menu lets you adjust some settings, as well as listen to all of the music from the game.
- Level: the difficulty of the game. Choices are Easy, Normal, and Hard. The default is Normal.
- Continue: the number of continues available. Continues allow you to start a level over if you happen to lose all of your lives. The default is 3.
- Count: the number of lives you have. The default is 3 (2 surplus).
- Button: allows you to adjust the shoot or bomb buttons for player one and two.
- Music: a two digit number from 00 to 22 that corresponds with the background music files. When highlighted, press
or 
to start or restart the track, and 
to stop the sound. - Sound: allows you to toggle between Stereo and Mono. The default is Stereo.
- BGM: allows you to toggle music on or off.
Characters[edit]
After choosing either "1 Player" or "2 Player" from the title screen, players will be able to choose their character. A player can only chose a fighter from their respective side (that is, each player can only choose 4 of the 8 characters). In a 2-player game, the player that begins the game determines the available nation of both fighters, until the game ends.
| Nation(?) | Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Blaster Keaton (F/A-18 Hornet) | Keith Bishop (F-14 Tomcat) |
| Japan | Hien (FSX) | Mao Mao (F-15 Eagle) |
| Sweden | Kohful The Viking (AJ-37) | Tee-Bee 10 (JAS 39 Gripen) |
| United Kingdom | Lord River N. White (Tornado IDS) | Villiam Syd Pride (AV-8 Harrier II) |
| N/A | Rabio (red rabbit) | Lepus (green rabbit) |
Stages[edit]
There are 8 stages in this game. The beginning stages consists of randomly chosen areas from nations of unselected fighters (assuming those fighters have nations). If Rabio or Lepus is chosen, all 4 rival nation stages become playable. After completing all rival nation stages, there are 4 more stages.
In the SNES version, the are 2 stage loops, and the order of rival nations is fixed. In the 2nd loop, the game's difficulty increased, except in the very hard difficulty, where the 2nd loop is easier.
Player and team-specific endings occur after completing the 1st loop. After completing the 2nd loop, the ending consists of all pilot pairs giving a speech, with the 2nd pilot in the last pair giving a cheat code.
Version differences[edit]
The SNES version adds hidden boss attack and time attack modes, and 2 hidden playable fighters, Rabio and Lepus (from Rabio Lepus, known outside of Japan as Rabbit Punch).
This version was released in limited quantities outside of Japan, and is one of the rarest cartridges for the SNES.
The Japanese version does not use kanji in text as in the arcade version.