• Smith recommends “taking out all the ground units in an area and making a safe zone. Then let the enemy aircraft come to you, at least while you have the fuel for it.”
• Don’t forget about those new maneuvers. Your strafing ability comes in handy when you run across a group of enemy planes. Rather than firing and looping around for another attack, strafe and take them out in one pass.
• Watch your fuel and shields at all times. If you’re critically low on one or both and don’t see any useful power-ups nearby, head for the aircraft carrier to trade in your plane for a new one.
• The aircraft carrier can now take damage, so defend it when the game tells you it’s under attack.
• For maximum efficiency when attacking ground units, drop your bombs just before you’re over them, which should result in a direct hit. If you unload while over them, your payload will harmlessly land next to them.

WingNuts 2. You’re cleared for landing. Stop by the carrier to refuel and repair your plane.

• Levels: Your basic Airburst match.
• Story Game: Play as each of the four original Airburst characters and travel around the galaxy as you try to uncover and thwart the ruthless Mars Media Mega Corporation’s evil plans.
• Boss Test: Take on a more powerful Airburst character who has more rings of balloons.
• Deathmatch: A non-violent take on the first-person shooter staple. You and your opponents only have a single ring of balloons circling your characters. Last one left floating wins.
• Super Deathmatch: Even more players than regular Deathmatch, plus you have no balloon ring to protect you.
• Revolution: You and your opponents rotate around the playing field, unable to control your movements the way you can during a typical Airburst match.
• Asteroids: Rather than bounce a burster toward each other, everyone must fend off asteroids raining down from the top of the screen.
• Pop!: When someone gets hit, their balloons continue to pop until another player fails to deflect the burster. Speeds up the game considerably, making it perfect for a five-minute Airburst break.
• Football: Known as soccer in the United States, but the Fothergills are British, so they use the European term. Players break into two teams with a goal on either end tended by a goalie. First one to 10 goals wins. The soccer ball acts just like a burster and can eliminate players; if one team loses all its players before a goal is scored, the other team automatically wins the match.
• Air Mail: You’ve probably heard of people who play chess by mail. Now play Airburst by email. You start out in a room with walls made of balloons. Burst a hole in one of the walls as fast as you can and send the code the game gives you to a friend. Now she takes a turn and sends a code back. First player to make their way to the last room wins.
• Dogs!: Similar to Deathmatch, except there are enough bursters equal to the number of players. Another mode perfect for a quick break.
• Catch the Frog: Your team gets the frog every time an opponent’s balloon bursts. As long as you have it, the burster won’t affect you.
• Castles One: A balloon castle consisting of one central large balloon and several rings of smaller ones sits in the middle of the playing field. The first player to either burst it or eliminate all the other players wins.
• Castles Two: The same as Castles One, except the castle only has one ring.
• Chaos: All the power-ups available in the game appear in the same level. Once the deathmatch power-up gets activated, the contest usually ends pretty quickly.

• Dogs Extreme!: The game starts with all eight extreme powers active simultaneously.
• Sumo: Two players enter the ring of deadly mines, one player leaves. Try to push the other player into the ring of mines and pop all his balloons, ending the match. You still have to watch for the bursters bouncing around, though.
• Team Levels: The team version of Levels, except you’re also squaring off in the mine ring from Sumo.
• Balloon Racing: Circles similar to those you might find in a board game circle the playing field. A token representing you moves one space for every opponent you eliminate (players come back right after they fall); the first one to get all the way around the board wins.
• Shootout: Every time you direct a burster that hits another player’s balloon, it re-appears on your bat, giving you another shot. Perfect to use when you’re right next to another player who’s trying to fend off an opponent on the other side: you can fire at his balloons over and over from such close range.
• Duel: A two-person game. Each player starts at opposite sides of the screen with no protecting ring of balloons and a single burster on his bat. First one to fall loses.
• Duel 2: Same as Duel but with eight players.
• Burst: Similar to Levels, but played in the liquid methane seas of Uranus, where everything moves slower. Even the speedball power-up only revs the action up to standard Airburst speed.
• Thief: Each time you burst an opponent’s balloon it gets added to your ring. Otherwise, the gameplay is the same as Levels.
• Grenades: Each time a player gets hit, a grenade timer appears next to his character. If he can’t hit an opponent’s balloons before the timer reaches zero, the grenade explodes and he’s eliminated.
• Tutorial: Learn the basic Airburst moves, complete with a mini match against a computer-controlled opponent.
• Mini: If you have a registered copy of the original Airburst, you can select this option and play any of the game modes with miniaturized characters and bursters.
• Racing: You and your opponents race around a track on your balloons. First one to the finish line wins.
• Tag Team: You and one opponent each select four characters. When one of your characters falls, the next one appears. When one player has no more characters left, they lose.
• Choosy: Each player chooses their favorite power-up to start the contest with.
• Invasion: An Airburst-style take on Space Invaders. Bounce the bursters against the advancing rows of alien robots astride balloons. If they reach you, the game ends.