Alien Storm (Genesis) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Sega's 1991 horror-themed beat 'em up for the Sega Genesis, Alien Storm.

Played through on the default difficulty level as Garth.

Alien Storm is a port of Sega's 1990 arcade game of the same name, and like most of the company's conversions to the Genesis, this one was pretty solid. It begins with some sort of alien invasion taking place, and it seems that their intent is to wipe out humanity. It's your job to wade through throngs of these gooey xenomorphs, wiping them out to fulfill objectives given to you at the beginning of each stage.

The easiest way to describe Alien Storm is to liken it to Golden Axe. Even though the setting and the weapon selections are entirely different between the games, the characters, attacks, combos, and enemy patterns are all strikingly similar.

There are, however, a couple of major differences that help to define Alien Storm as more than a mere Golden Axe clone. There is much more variety to the gameplay this time - there are now some auto-scrolling segments, in addition to a few first-person shooting gallery stages that serve to refresh your power levels as you find batteries hidden away in shelves and walls.

The gameplay in Alien Storm is smooth and solid, albeit a bit too simple for what you might expect from a home release, but its difficulty is well balanced. It is quite a bit of fun to go through again and again.

What makes the game particularly memorable, though, has to be the enemy designs. I love these monsters!Most of them are fairly gross or creepy, but what I really appreciated about was the attention given to the details. Some of these nasty pink masses will ooze at you as they flick their tentacles. Mailboxes and trashcans will start to rock back and forth before an alien appears from underneath, wearing the objects like a snail does its shell. And what is with half of these enemies looking like they've decorated themselves with half-melted, screaming infant heads? Eww.

Alien Storm doesn't have the star power that the Golden Axe brand carries, but that shouldn't deter you from checking out this quirky beat 'em up. If you find yourself hankering for a cheesy monster flick in video game form, pick yourself up a copy of this one for Halloween.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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