Alien Storm - Sega Megadrive

Alien Storm is a fantastic blast that's virtually arcade perfect! The graphics are spot-on with a whole host of brilliant aliens and decent backdrops. The action is mega-fast, very smooth and highly addictive. You'll be at this until you've completed it...which, erm, isn't very long i'm afraid. Yes, it's sad but oh-so-true; completing Alien Storm is about as difficult as putting on a pair of trousers! Virtually everyone in the office completed the game within half an hour of its arrival - it's that simple. It's a real shame that the extra difficulty levels don't really add that much of a challenge to the game. For £35.00, you should get a lot more value for money, and in this respect Alien Storm just doesn't deliver. Fans of the coin-op will doubtlessly enjoy this (although they'll probably complete it even quicker than Storm novices), but otherwise I find it hard to recommend this game.

Alien Storm features stunning graphics that mimic their horrifically grisly arcade counterparts perfectly. Some of the sprite animation is really fantastic, and there are plenty of gruesome touches - one alien has green arms inside its mouth which reach out and grab you; another farts noxious gases, one irritating type spits goo from mouths in its chest, there's a mutoid kangaroo which sprouts a disgusting proboscis from its pouch, a giant slitherer which opens it mouth enormously wide and leaps across at you, and there's also a horrible...er...thing which grabs you, turns you upside down and drops you on your head! The music is also fantastic, with plenty of rockin' tunes and brill sound effects. "So the game is great, then" I hear you cry. Well, I'm afraid it's not - nowhere near. What Alien Storm completely lacks is something totally vital. It's called challenge. I finished it on my first go - without using any of the six credits I gave myself!

My local leisure centre had an Alien Storm cabinet for a few months and it got the lion's share of my loose change when the appeal of playing Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ran out. Playing very much like a futuristic Golden Axe (Gordon is the spitting image of Ax Battler), Alien Storm really got my hooked and showed just how talented Sega were at creating game concepts.

The Megadrive conversion isn't quite arcade perfect - graphically the original arcade machine is more impressive - but in terms of gameplay everything is present and correct. As the MM team point out, the game is far too easy, but it's still a great laugh in two-player mode, just like Golden Axe was before it.

If you fancy a bit of alien bashing, make sure you get the Japanese version - not just because the boxart is fantastically good (and the PAL artwork is predictably awful), but because it's supposed to be slightly harder.