Alien Storm


Aninhumer

Guy with scary face.
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I have made my own review blog, I will try and post all my reviews on here (I don't know how many I wil do).
Here's my first review:

alienstorm1.gif
alienstorm3.gif


This is one of the few games I've downloaded that has an element of nostalgia, I remember playing this on our After School Club's Megadrive. (We still had that when the N64 was starting to be old hat) Back then no one ever got past the 6th or 7th level. Now, with save states, that won't even be hard.

The storyline is a standard "Aliens have invaded earth" type of thing. You can play as a Man, a Woman or a Robot. The are pretty much the same, but with different graphics. The game appears to have ranged weapons, but in reality all the attacks are close range, so I'm inclined to call it a beat-em-up. There are occasional forraies into other types of gameplay; at the end of each level there is a side scrolling shooter, and at the end of one level there is a short section where you get the ranged weapons you expected from the pictures.

The graphics are an attempt to be grotesque in 8-bit, the result is actually rather comical. The monster seen in the shot has human faces all over it's body, and one of it's attacks involves a zombie thing coming out of it's mouth and pulling you inside. Nevertheless there is a wide variety of enemies to zap, blast and burn. The environments are fine, at least, they are for an 8-bit game.

The controls are intuitive and simple, the three buttons do three things. Attack, Roll and Special Attack. The special attack destroys all normal enemies, but the graphics for them were always fun. The Man's is the only one that really makes sense he just calls in a spaceship which guns down the enemies. Slightly odder is the Robot, his special attack is to selfdestruct from the neck down, then a new body comes in and picks up his head. But perhaps oddest, the Woman's special drops some sort of missile on top of you, which, by some miracle, doesn't hurt the players at all.

All round, quite a good game. Reasonble graphics, easy controls and fun gameplay, and as it's only a 512kb ROM, this game will probably sit on my GP2X for some time.

EDIT: The usage 0f "8-bit" refers to the 256 possible colours
 
This game is really funny, I played it on my Amiga and I always had to laugh because it is so strange. I always thougt that this is the Double Dragon version of Alien Syndrome.
Unfortunately, the original arcade Alien Storm version does not work on Franxis' amazing MAME emu, but the Megadrive version is not too bad, and the Megadrive is a 16-bit console (or am I wrong?)
 
chaos engineer posted on Feb 23 2006 at 12:32 PM said:
This game is really funny, I played it on my Amiga and I always had to laugh because it is so strange. I always thougt that this is the Double Dragon version of Alien Syndrome.
Unfortunately, the original arcade Alien Storm version does not work on Franxis' amazing MAME emu, but the Megadrive version is not too bad, and the Megadrive is a 16-bit console (or am I wrong?)
I was refering to the graphics not the processer, I'm not sure if the MD is 16-bit, but I'm pretty sure it's 256 colours.
 
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WhiteFalcon posted on Feb 23 2006 at 03:53 PM said:
Genesis/Megadrive is 16bit and it is not in 256 colors, but in 64.
Is that 64 possible colours? :eek: That's like rubbish!
Or is it just colours on screen at one time?
 
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w00t, and such.
I'm on the homepage!

Btw I didn't think anything would use 64/6-bit colour because it wouldn't work well in binary.
Knoxximus posted on Feb 23 2006 at 04:32 PM said:
Yeah, if this were an 8-bit game, you would have been playing it a coupla years earlier on a SMS. :)
Ironically, when I was looking for screenshots for this game I couldn't move for SMS versions.
 
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WhiteFalcon posted on Feb 23 2006 at 04:40 PM said:
It is 64 concurrent colors on screen.
That's what I would have thought, I was refering to possible colours.
And you're right the MD is 16-bit.
 
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i foudn the bet bit of this game was the artwork on the box of the amiga and c64 versions. it was so good it still feels kinda creapy lol.
 
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