Help! help! The aliens have landed! 'That's alright!' says Mark Caswell, 'I'll just nip over to the burger café and get some help!' He's obviously, stark, staring bonkers. Oh, well…
US Gold
£10.99/£15.99
Look. I'm not bonkers at all. For many years people have claimed to see strange lights in the sky and to have met little green men. Most thought them mad or senile, but there's a band of serious UFO watchers who've anticipated the invasion plans that are to materialise. They set up the Burger Cafe as a cover with three of their best operatives to watch the skies.
And - behold! - the aliens arrive! So, it's just as well Gordon, Karla and Scooter (the heroic Alien Busters) are ready to thwart the plans of the bug-eyed monsters who want to take over the planet. That's where the game begins.
The aliens are carrying out raids on Earth from a huge mothership, hidden from radar by alien technology, and what's more, the aliens are disguising themselves as everyday objects: they appear as potted plants, telephone boxes, dustbins and other unlikely objects.
THE GAME ITSELF!
Alien Storm is a one or two player game and starts with a choice of a character to play. Each carries two guns: a really, reeeeeally huge intimidating jobbie to blow away big targets (that also makes a really great noise), plus a standard gun for small annoying aliens who sidle up and try to bite your leg off.
Agility is the characters'strong point: they leap and roll, avoiding the bug eyed beasties niftily. Offense tactics (guns aside) include clubbing the aliens over the bonce and blasting them with smart bombs.
STYLISH FUN
The game has three game-styles which pop up from level-to-level.
Style number one is a bit Golden Axe-ish (ie, fight the creepies on the current screen and then move onto another location and do away with a few more). Set on the streets, all is pretty quiet until something wanders along that wouldn't look out of place in the worst anchovy pizza-induced nightmare. Adversaries appear alone, and sometimes in groups, but most are camouflaged as everyday objects and leap out on you as you pass.
A press of the fire button soon whips you into action, although whether you fire the really huge or the not-so-huge gun is chosen by the computer, as is smashing the living daylights out of the scum with your rifle butt.
Your energy level rapidly depletes: energy capsules can be collected when certain adversaries bite the dust, but you often die quicker than capsules are collected (ain't that always the way?). Destroy all the aliens on that bit and onwards you progress.
THE RUNNING VERY FAST BIT
A change of gameplay follows: we call it the 'running very fast bit' 'cos that's what it's all about. The screen scrolls horizontally from left to right, and the computer controls the firing of your unfeasably large weapon. All you have to do is move your character up and down the screen to shoot the bug eyed swines. Simple, fun and (in a strange sort of way) quite relaxing.
A third play variation occurs every couple of levels, and sees our heroes battling it out with the aliens in a shop. The view is through the characters' eyes, and in true Op Wolf style a floating cursor allows you to aim your weapon. Monsters attack you from behind well-stocked shelves: create complete havoc and splatter them across the counters. It's a super section and refreshingly different from the other game styles.
IT'S ALL RATHER VIOLENT, THEN?
Indeed it is! The game is amazingly close to its coin-op parent: fast, violent and, most important of all, playable (thank heavens). Aliens certainly come in some weird and wonderful shapes, and are very often amusing in their disguises. As with all games with two player mode, Alien Storm is at its best when a mate joins in: it certainly needs two of you to get past some of the horrors you meet up with.
It's a wonderful conversion, spiffy in fact. So, pick up that huge gun (it's sitting there in the corner) and prepare to go wild (I did!).
MARK [90%]
This is one wicked game! it combines the best features from shoot-and beat-'em-ups into one, with different styles of gameplay and some impressive presentation to top it all off. What makes Alien Storm stand out from the crowd is the three different game styles to each mission, which gives the game welcome variety. I've been playing Alien Storm for quite a while now and I reckon I'll be playing it heaps more - it's a brilliant conversion of a highly playable coin-op.
NICK [88%]
| Presentation | 90% |
|---|---|
| Graphics | 88% |
| Sound | 85% |
| Playability | 89% |
| Addictivity | 90% |
| Overall | 89% |
US Gold
£10.99 cass
Reviewer: Andy Ide
I wish all these aliens would go away. One minute you think you've got rid of them all, and then you turn your head and a whole new bunch have just teleported into a cornfield from Zebra Gloopglox 90 or wherever. It's just not cricket.
And they're ruddy rude as well - take the blokes in Alien Storm. Some even have the audacity to disguise themselves as dustbins(!) and pounce on you when you're walking by! Of course, you can splat them with your ziagron laser blaster, but they still make a disgusting mess all over your Nikes and leave a pongy smell behind. (Personally, I blame cutbacks in airport immigration staff.) Still, if a job's got to be done it's, er, got to be done, so let's take a closer inspection at the game they're all calling "Alien Storm actually" and see what we think.
HEY, GOOD-LOOKING!
And as coin-op conversions go it's pretty top-notch stuff. This isn't to say that it's particularly playable - just that it's politely faithful to the original. The Sega machine was a bit of a star, but that was due more to fancy sprites and graphics than any outstanding playability, and the Tiertex game is the same.
The six levels are split into different bits, but all of them contain a horizontally-flipping walk-along-the-road sequence where you've got to blap loads of uglies and pick up energy pods. You do this by using a sort of backpack firehose thing that sends out lots of deadly electricity (which, along with the name of our heroes - the Alien Busters - is as flagrant a rip-off of the mighty Ghostbusters as I've ever come across). Other sequences include an Op Wolf shooter in a supermarket (more originality), and some really, really fast scrolling along another road, where you've got to, well, kill a few more aliens.
And, as I said, it all looks jolly scrumptious. The sprites are crisp and fluid, and the fast scrolling zips along like lightning. The crosshairs bit comes a cropper - everything's so detailed you can't see what's coming at you, but you get used to it in time.
Which means it's a real pity the gameplay's so flat. Despite what I said, killing aliens can be fun (especially when they look like vegetable omelettes and spooky snails like they do here). But when all you've got to do is dodge them on a pavement and then pound away absent-mindedly at the fire button it can get a bit trying. Alien Storm isn't easy - but who wants to play a game that's difficult when there's no skill involved. It's a shame. You kind of wish they'd given the spanky graphics to MERCS instead (which was a good game, but with pretty crap design).
| Life Expectancy | 72% |
|---|---|
| Instant Appeal | 78% |
| Graphics | 87% |
| Addictiveness | 70% |
| Overall | 75% |
Label: US Gold
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £11.99 Tape, £16.99 Disk
Reviewer: Steve Keen
After a white hot preview in the July issue U.S. Gold are at last sorting out the little niggles in this, their latest release. After seeing the test copies the Crew could not wait to get their suckers on the finished product and as predicted in ish. 113 monster mashing has never been so much fun!
The beast busting takes place on Earth as the marauding aliens have come down from their orbiting mother ship to colonize our planet after using their own as a toxic waste bin. However the Earthlings still have one hope, the Alien Busters, three self-appointed UFO look-outs who staff an alien combat force based in the local Burger Cafe.
Structurally the game is good news for Speccy owners as it's format is almost identical to the coin-op. You can choose between the three rebels Gordon, Carlo and Scooter. Each repel the scum suckers in their own special way and all have their own weapons and animation. For instance Scooter, the robot, has a bazooka in his leg and his wrists incorporate a machine gun. Which weapon is used is decided by how close you are to the enemy. Prototype type plasma rifles and neutron bombs come as standard, the bombs are particularly useful as they clear the whole screen, but they must be used with caution as they seriously deplete your energy supply and if this is reduced to zero you'll be using your gun butt or bare hands!
A life meter monitors your health and extra top-ups are available through out the six levels. Blood thirsty gamesters are well catered for as each of these are separated by stages and are inhabited with hordes of varying slime.
Ranging from giant ant-like creatures to undulating Maryland Cookies the man eaters pursue you through cities, houses, shops and mother ship over arcade beat 'em up levels to Op. Wolf style sections. Some of the blighters even hide out in normal objects such as oil drums and spring out on you as they approach! All this is great fun, frying uglies and watching their tentacles flay around in fright, but the real adrenaline grabber lays in the simultaneous two player option. Although you can only use the same players in 48k mode, all you 128k smug mugs can choose between the three main sprites to maximize the genocide.
Alien Storm mixes fab animation and graphics with futuristic blast 'em up arcade mayhem and the lack of on screen colour adds to the atmosphere rather than detracting from it. The main sprites are a little "stiff" and sound is unfortunately sparse, but there's loads of fun to be found in the program. Just alien bustin' fab!
GARTH:
It's been a long coming and could be a while longer before it's in the shops, but it will be worth the wait. Alien Storm really kicks some ass.
MATT:
What a blast! My favourite character is Scooter. He'll always be the last bod standing and he'll give any bogey a run for his money.
| Graphics | 89% |
|---|---|
| Sound | 70% |
| Playability | 78% |
| Lastability | 80% |
| Overall | 87% |
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