A decent, yet forgettable, Genesis game.
Being an early generation Genesis game, I thought the graphics were pretty impressive. Granted, I only had limited exposure to 16-bit graphics at the time and my NES was still my more dominant system. The backgrounds were nicely detailed along with each of the characters. I thought the male character’s weapon was the coolest with the electric effects. It reminded me of Ghostbusters. The music was very appropriate for the alien theme. It had a spacey quality and very fast-paced and worked well to add to the overall atmosphere. The game play was simple beat-em up set up. One button to attack, another to jump, and the last button to call a special attack. If you played Golden Axe or Streets of Rage, then you would be familiar with the set up. The control is adequate and it isn’t difficult to move your character around.
The only thing that bothered me, and was also notorious with other similar games at the time, was that I was able to get through the game only after a few hours of play. Not to say the game wasn’t challenging, but it was too short. Most of the levels weren’t very long and only really consisted of moving a short ways then a transition to another short stage. A nice touch was, on certain levels, the game would incorporate a first-person shooter element. It isn’t too impressive compared to today’s standards, but was pretty cool back in the early nineties. I did log plenty of hours on this game despite completing it early on. This was only due to the fact that I had only three other Genesis games at the time. Needless to say, there isn’t much replay value, even by early Genesis standards.
Overall, I thought Alien Storm was a decent game worthy of play. Most people probably never even heard of this game since it was what I would consider an obscure title. I still own it, but that is because I have this aversion to getting rid of any of my games.