The overall presentation is bland and lacks punch. The cockpit instrument panel occupies half of the screen in the Game Boy Advance version and one-third of the upper screen in the DS version. Enemy planes and vehicles are tiny unless you're right on top of them, and when you are on top of them, they turn into giant pixelated blobs. The sky and ground are merely two contrasting shades of color. If not for the plane's tendency to right itself and the fact that clouds are in the sky, you'd have no way of knowing which end is up. The only noteworthy graphical touches are the goofy cutscenes that show takeoffs and landings, as well as the missile-cam video clips that play on a small display in the cockpit when you destroy an enemy target. Also, there's not much to say about the audio. All of the requisite gun and missile sounds are present, while a guitar riff that's eerily similar to Kenny Loggins' music from Top Gun loops constantly. On the whole, F24 Stealth Fighter looks and feels similar to the air combat games that were produced for the Sega Genesis and SNES in the early 1990s. Now that it's 2007, both the GBA and Nintendo DS are capable of better.
Why is the game called F24 Stealth Fighter when enemy planes and missile systems have no trouble locking on to your airplane?
For the most part, the GBA and DS versions of the game are identical. In both games, the main draw is the campaign mode, which spans 20 missions and takes approximately three hours to finish. The DS version includes a few minor enhancements that don't do anything to improve the overall experience. Some of the cockpit instrumentation was moved to the lower screen, and you can use the touch screen to perform a number of commands. However, you'll rarely find yourself doing so because it's easier and faster to press a button when you want to switch weapons or adjust speed. There's also a multiplayer mode in the DS version that lets as many as four players compete in deathmatch scenarios, but it suffers from the same problems as the main campaign mode, and every player must have his or her own cartridge to participate. Ultimately, the only worthwhile enhancement that the developers made to the DS version was replacing the GBA's password-based save system with an on-cartridge save function.
Even if you're totally desperate to acquire an air combat game for your GBA or DS, you're better off staying away from F24 Stealth Fighter. It's boring, it's ugly, and it's somewhat broken.
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