Hurricane Airfire is a standard top down shoot 'em up. The player controls an aircraft and tries to shoot down as many enemy aircraft and ground targets as possible. The enemies, which vary in strength and speed, generally fly in formation on a predetermined route across the screen with some shooting slow moving bullets at the player’s aircraft.

Items appear randomly on screen that can be picked up to increase the power and effectiveness of the player's aircraft. The power-ups are Speed (speed that the weapons are fired), Front Fire (the amount of bullets that fire from the front), Homing Missiles (tracks the enemy), Missiles (fires out from the side of the aircraft), Backfire (shoots out the back), Drone (flies around by itself shooting enemies), and Shield (Stops bullets, damaged when hit). Each power-up has 3 power levels to it with exception to the Drone (four levels) and Speed (seven levels). If the player's aircraft gets hit by a bullet the player will lose one of the three lives and all the power-ups will go down one level before continuing on.

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