The game's story involves a secret underground race on an island in the Atlantic Ocean which has stolen top military vehicles and equipment from around the world and built powerful war machines from them.

Super Gamer reviewed the SNES version and gave an overall score of 70% writing: "Another vertical scroller with the addition of simultaneous two-player action.

rated Super SWIV 72nd on its Top 100 SNES Games writing: "It looks a bit dated but this shooter is brilliantly designed.

"[4] Glenn Rubenstein of Wizard praised Firepower 2000 for there finally being an above average shooter for the SNES that was not produced by Konami, however not much effort was put into the graphics or plot.

He commented that the gameplay being heavy on action made it an overall winner concluding: "Should be big with shooter fans, but the general player probably won’t get too into it.