Announced during the company's recent spring press event in San Francisco, Ghost Squad is an enhanced version of Sega-AM2's politically-themed arcade title released for the Xbox-based Chihiro board. Though not as immediately recognizable as Sega's Virtua Cop or The House of the Dead franchises, the newer Ghost Squad has become one of the company's most popular light gun shooters. While no games were available for hands-on impressions during Sega's event, Ghost Squad was present in live form and was demonstrated live by two representatives playing cooperatively.

Ghost Squad is well suited to a console conversion, with a level of gameplay variety and interactivity higher than those posessed by most arcade light gun games, as well as nonlinearity in the level design. While the bulk of the game deals with attempting to shoot terrorists in the face, as a member of the clearly reverse-acronymed Global Humanitarian Operation & Special Tactics Squad you might also find yourself defusing bombs with point-and-click mechanics or freeing hostages while under fire. Weapons, which come in standard modern flavors such as machine guns, submachine guns, pistols, rifles, and more, have multiple firing modes. For example, the SMG can be set to single-shot mode or fully automatic fire.

Each of the game's missions has some 16 potential iterations, thanks to varying selectable paths and enemy layouts. As players progress, they will be able to acquire new equipment from the Wii version's total roster of 25 weapons, not to mention the spate of alternate costumes. Playing better--for example, landing many headshots--will grand resources more quickly. Unlockables can also be found by blowing away the game's many destructible environments.

Ghost Squad on Wii contains all of the content and features present in the arcade version, but adds the capability to play cooperatively with up to four players on the same screen. Since the Wii is a relative pointing device, like a mouse, rather than a literal light gun device, the game also uses targeting reticules. A Sega rep demonstrated an option to switch off reticules on a player-by-player basis, but the significant added challenge means most players are likely to keep them on.

To replicate the experience of Ghost Squad's IC card, which allows players to save and reuse their characters and rankings, Sega has added online leaderboards for Wii. Representatives also promised an entirely new game mode unique to the Wii game, but declined to elaborate any further. Visually, the game appears to be a direct port--so, while its 2004-era graphics aren't going to blow gamers' minds, it is hard to imagine that getting in the way of fast-paced Wii-remote based light gun gameplay.

It is a mystery why it has taken so long for a fully-fledged arcade light gun game to make it to Wii, but Sega seems to be on the right track with Ghost Squad. It is a title that is already known to be a solid light-gun shooter, and the addition of four-player multiplayer, though likely to be a crowded affair, is welcome.

Sega plans to ship Polygon Magic's Wii version of Sega-AM2's Ghost Squad in early 2008.