 SEGA DRUNK Finally, a game that lives up to its title, but Alien Storm isn't just a veritable storm of aliens. It's many things. It's a gallery shooter. It's a run and gun. It's a beat-em-up. This game is fantastic. It was originally made by Sega for Japanese arcades back in 1990, and of course the luxury of making your own arcade cabinets and having your own home console system is that you can keep everything in-house. This game did get ported to a bunch of other platforms like the Master System, Amiga and Commodore 64, but the Sega Genesis port of Alien Storm is the best of them all. It's not quite at the level of intensity that the arcade original reaches, but rest assured, this is one of those games where you're going to be hearing the plastic on your controller creak and squeak as you play this one. It is intense. Plus, not only is this game to-player co-op, it's a reasonably cheap cartridge as well, usually going between $10 and $15. You have three characters to choose from, all with different weapons. There's a dude who uses a short-range electrical zapper thing. The manual calls it a thunder bazooka. There's a gal who uses a flamethrower, and there's a robot who uses a whip. You have three lives and zero continues to get through eight levels with no saves or passwords. When you lose all your lives, it is game over. Start from the beginning. But you do at least have a few chances to gain some extra lives here and there. When you do die, you continue right then and there, so that's nice. However, bear in mind there's no opportunities to switch characters here. You're stuck with whoever you pick at the beginning. But that's no big deal, since, while their weapons are different, each character's speed and range of motion is pretty much the same. As you can see, the gameplay is pretty simple, at least at first. You're just zapping and blowing up these bizarre-looking monsters. Check out this thing that tries to freaking eat you. So cool. If this part of the game looks familiar to anyone, it's because Alien Storm was directed by the same fellow that produced and directed Golden Axe, Makoto Uchida. And sure enough, the controls are pretty similar, with B attacking and A unleashing a clear screen attack, which is different for each character. Plus, if you manage to get close enough to an enemy, your character will do an even stronger melee attack, like this dude, for example, spiking a grenade. While there's similarities between Alien Storm and Golden Axe, there's two big differences I should point out. One is the gameplay variety. After getting through the beat'em up section, you go into this warehouse here, and the game transitions into a gallery shooter, destroying even uglier monsters and blowing up crates for energy that powers your clear screen attack. You start the next level with more beat'em up action, this time leading to a boss fight against, uh, whatever this thing is, and after you defeat it, you get these handy-dandy alien bug things that drop power-ups. Next, you're running 99 miles an hour gunning down anything that moves. Okay, this would make sense for the robot, but how do the humans run this fast? This game goes back and forth between these three game modes, and all three are well done. I especially like the gallery shooter stages that take you to convenient stores or an electronics retailer so you can blow up all sorts of crap. The second major difference from Golden Axe is the speed of this game. This game plays really fast and cuts a very quick pace, and there's two main control functions that add to that big time. One is being able to roll or dash by pressing the C button, and the other is the ability to run by double-tapping left or right. The only thing that's kinda lousy about this setup is that it means you've got to do a little finger gymnastics to be able to jump. You have to double-tap left or right, then press C, and then press B to do an attack in mid-air. This can be tricky to pull off and actually hit an enemy, but it is cool. I really like that this game is just go, go, go the entire play-through. Even the gallery shooter stages manage to be fast and intense. Now, normally in games like this, the key to progressing through the game is getting all enemies on screen on one side. That's usually done with a toss or a suplex of some kind. In Alien Storm, the key is to move yourself from one side or the other, and you do that by dashing or deftly rolling from side to side. That's a nice twist on the usual beat-em-up formula that I appreciate. This game also has lots of weird little touches everywhere, like this monster gnawing on a house. Hey, you gotta get your fiber one way or another. There's lots of terrified, panicked civilians that run screaming past you. There's aliens popping up from underneath nail boxes. There's aliens harassing civilians. There's regular Joes that walk out and actually turn into aliens. And the music throughout this game does a great job providing even more energy to the playthrough. I should mention one quirk of the gameplay, however. The energy meter isn't just for special attacks. It does slowly trickle down the more you use your weapon, and it can run out, rendering your weapon a blunt object. Having said that, I don't think I ran out of energy once. This is really only an issue if you abuse the clear screen attacks. There's a couple other game modes in Alien Storm as well. One is the duel, and it's just that. You duel enemies one-on-one in nine straight battles while on one health meter, gauntlet style. There's also a one-on-one fighting mode against a second player, but as you might expect, that mode is pretty limited. One other thing I should point out is that you have to go to the options menu to turn rapid fire on. Otherwise, you'd be pounding the B button like crazy, and that's always annoying, so make sure rapid fire is on before you play. So yeah, Alien Storm is a fantastic encapsulation of early 90s SEGA. The gameplay is fast and chaotic. The aliens here are straight out of something like Splatterhouse, and the different game modes aren't just there for the sake of variety. They're actually fun and add a lot to the game. Sure, you could nitpick certain things like how the three characters should have had different capabilities or how there's quite a few enemy palette swaps, but ultimately, those things don't detract from what is a really fun playthrough. Alien Storm was part of the SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for 360 and PS3 made in 2009, but it's really a shame that this game wasn't included as part of the Genesis Mini Collection. It's a fantastic, fast-paced two-player game that has really held up well over time. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.