Operation Wolf was a series of light gun shooters from Taito that graced the arcades during the ’80s and ’90s, and back in 2011 Ivanovich Games paid tribute to the series with their own take called Operation Wow (Free). As light gun shooters translate pretty well to the touchscreen, Operation Wow was a fun homage and a good game in its own right, but unfortunately the game has been negelected for years now as Ivanovich became busy with their numerous other projects. Then when VR burst onto the scene a few years ago, they took a stab at another homage called Operation Warcade VR, which was a gallery-style shooter that you could play in a virtual reality space, putting you right in the middle of the action. Now Ivanovich has reworked Operation Warcade for iOS devices with both a classic side-view gallery shooting mode and a very interesting AR mode that allows you to step right into a virtual arcade cabinet.
I have to say that as gimmicky as most of the AR stuff I’ve seen on mobile is, and this certainly is too, it’s also really pretty neat to be able to literally enter into an arcade machine like that. Whether or not it will add to the gameplay experience or be just be a neat party trick remains to be seen. That said, we won’t need to wait long as Operation Warcade is releasing this Thursday, March 15th. It’s up for pre-order right now, so if you click this link on an iOS 11 device you can pre-order the game in the App Store for $2.99 and it’ll automatically download to your device when it becomes available. Otherwise look to buy Operation Warcade the old fashioned way later this week.
