PLATOON (Nova) - Fully working shooter for Hypseus! (Official Announcement) Now available.
When people talk about FMV light-gun games, the conversation almost always begins with the same familiar names. Titles from companies like American Laser Games defined the genre in the early nineties, and for many players, they still represent its high-water mark.
But running quietly alongside those well-known releases were a handful of projects that never quite found their audience. Games that existed on the fringes of arcades, or never properly escaped development at all.
One of those games is Platoon, developed by Nova Productions.
Nova's Doomed FMV Arcade Shooter
Platoon was conceived as a full-motion video light-gun game in the same mould as its contemporaries: on-rails action, live-action footage, and enemy encounters driven entirely by pre-recorded scenes. The setting clearly evokes a Vietnam-era conflict with dense jungle terrain, ambushes from foliage, and enemy soldiers throughout. Although the game itself never explicitly names a location. And despite sharing its title with a well-known Vietnam-based film, there’s no connection between the two.
What’s far less clear is how widely Platoon was ever released. Evidence suggests that if it did reach arcades at all, it was in extremely small numbers. What survives today feels unmistakably unfinished: abrupt transitions, rough pacing, and design decisions that suggest a project that was still evolving when development stopped. In other words, Platoon is not a polished arcade classic. It’s a snapshot of a game that never got the chance to be completed.
Earlier Attempts to Emulate and Port
For years, the only practical way to experience Platoon was through emulation. Original ROMs do exist, and they can be run using WinUAE. But anyone who’s tried this will know just how hostile that experience can be. Technically functional, yes; but barely playable. playable with awkward control and issues that make it a poor substitute for the original arcade intent. While it’s invaluable as a reference, it’s not a way most people would choose to actually play the game.
There was, at one point, an attempt to bring Platoon into the modern FMV ecosystem via Singe. That project surfaced many years ago, but it was never finished, and never reached a state that could reasonably be described as playable. For a long time, that unfinished port was the closest thing the game had to a revival and it left Platoon in a kind of limbo.
But that’s where this release changes everything.
Hypseus to the Rescue!
LutherGond has now developed what can fairly be described as the definitive Singe port of Platoon.
Built for Hypseus, this version was created with a clear and very difficult goal: remain as faithful as possible to the original game, while also making it genuinely playable for modern audiences.
And that was no small task. The source material used here is unaltered original laserdisc footage, but very little authentic gameplay footage exists for reference. So reconstructing the original flow meant spending long hours cross-checking behaviour against WinUAE, imperfect as that process is, and making careful judgement calls where the original intent was unclear.
The result is a version of Platoon that finally feels coherent. Not rewritten, not reimagined, but properly realised.
This port also preserves the elements that make Platoon slightly unusual within the genre. Unlike many FMV shooters of the era, it includes collectible power-ups. These include a temporary machine-gun upgrade and Computer Assisted Targeting (or CAT) which helps draw attention to well-hidden enemies in dense jungle scenes. These mechanics give the game a subtly different rhythm, even if the overall experience is shorter than many of its contemporaries.
Crucially, this is now a game that you can simply play.
Download and Support
It runs across all platforms supported by Hypseus, works with modern light-guns such as the Sinden or Gun4IR, and can also be played perfectly well with a mouse, if you must. Both single-player and two-player modes are supported, and the game behaves consistently and predictably. Something that simply couldn’t be said of earlier attempts.
Platoon is available to download for free, with the link below.
All credit for this work goes to Luthergond. This project represents a careful balance between historical accuracy and practical usability, and finally gives Platoon a form that feels complete, even if the original game never truly was.
If you use RetroPie, Hypseus can be installed directly from RetroPie-Setup. otherwise, it is available from DirtBagXon's GitHub repo at https://github.com/DirtBagXon/hypseus-singe
You can download all the files needed for this multiplayer release of Platoon right now from the Internet Archive at https://tinyurl.com/platoon-2p
If you need support with Hypseus tips or want to discuss the game with other players, drop by the Hypseus Discord, where the community is always happy to lend a hand at https://discord.hypseus.net
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