Alien Highway
(Vortex, 1986)
Reviewed by Chris Lennard

Defeat the aliens again in this sequel to Highway Encounter. Once again you must guide the Vorton and its precious weapon; this time the Terratron, through 30 zones in an attempt to destroy the extraterrestrials' industrial complex. Avoiding the electrified edge of the road at all costs, you must get past the cunningly placed obstacles, whilst shooting the Zebs and any passing kamikaze aliens. Along the way you are also required to arm the bomb by picking up seven regeneration stations or otherwise it will fail to detonate. However what is a good, hard game is let down by MODE 1 graphics and poor sound.

See also: Highway Encounter.

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6

Nothing has been heard from the colony of LV-426 for some time, so Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley sends a team of five Colonial Marines to investigate – and her fears are well-founded, as the colony is now home to an army of aliens. Your aim is to find your way through the labyrinth of 255 rooms and kill the alien queen. The game (which is based on the highly successful film of the same name) mixes arcade and strategy elements – you'll be blasting a lot of aliens, but you need to work out a way of reaching the alien queen's chamber, and there are other rooms to explore as well. If you're not careful, one or more of your team might be captured or impregnated! It takes time to understand how the game is meant to be played, but you'll enjoy it once you do. The background music makes the atmosphere much more tense and eerie as well!

See also: Alien, Aliens: US Version.

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8

Our planet is once again being attacked by aliens, and a special squad known as Alien Busters is formed to save the day. In this game you may choose from three characters (Gordon, Scooter and Karla) who have different attributes and special moves, in order to complete six big levels, each of which is divided into several stages. Graphics are colourful MODE 0 with 16 colours on screen, and a lot of effort has been applied to make them look very detailed. The sound has a variety of effects which help the game maintain an atmosphere, and the main music theme is also fine. The gameplay is enjoyable because of the variety of players' moves, the good controls and the different gameplay stages of each level. You may have to face aliens in close combat or shoot them in first person perspective! Overall this is a very good and balanced game which you will most probably enjoy playing.

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8

This game was first released in the USA before it was released over here. As one might expect, it's based on the film of the same name, although unlike the UK version, which concentrates on one section of the film, the US version contains eight sub-games, each of which is inspired by a different section of the film. Unfortunately, the sub-games combine to make a rather unsatisfying and incoherent game. It starts off promisingly, with a nice comic book-style introduction and an easy first level in which you identify your equipment, but the second level, which sees you landing the drop ship, is almost impossible to complete. Thankfully there is a built-in cheat to allow you to select and play the other levels while you're playing this lousy game. The graphics in some of the sub-games are laughably bad as well.

See also: Alien, Aliens.

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5

Alien Syndrome is an eight-way scrolling maze shoot-'em-up. Your goal is to resuce the captives on each level before the timer runs out. One or two players can take part in a Gauntlet-like game. The game itself looks drab and moves at a jerky rate with endless numbers of mutant sausages and jellies out to get you. Computer screens sometimes hide the odd power-up or bonus, but this usually allows another nasty to catch up with you. Too difficult, poor use made of the CPC's graphic capability, with a handful of sound effects. This one could have been a great game if it wasn't for it being a rushed port.

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3

Alkahera sees you conscripted by the Galactic Government to patrol the trade routes in outer space. The game places you inside the cockpit of your spaceship with a 3D view of your surroundings, where your scanner alerts you to illegal presence. It's a simple game of "shoot the scaled sprite", where 90% of the time you collide with it instead. Game over occurs very quickly and the escape pod option is a waste of time. The graphics are colourful and add a little appeal. Simple sound effects add some atmosphere to a very boring game indeed.

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3

Alphakhor
(Loriciel, 1989)

In the year 2006, a deadly virus is threatening humanity's existence. However, there was an outbreak of an identical virus in 1463, and it was stopped successfully. It's up to Xavier Nollevo, who has invented a time machine, to go back to the Middle Ages and save humanity! This is an adventure game where you must explore a mediaeval town in the search for the magic formula, helping various characters as you go along. You have to be careful, and eat and drink all the time, and watch your money as well. The pictures are excellently drawn, and while it's not a particularly large adventure, it'll keep you occupied for some time – provided you understand French, that is.

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9

The master of all Gods, Zeus, commands you to rise from your grave and rescue his daughter. How could you refuse? After all, Zeus will send you some power-ups to increase your fighting abilities. Whenever you collect a few of them, your character will turn into a beast – either a werewolf or a dragon, depending on which level you are playing. This is quite a bad coin-op conversion. You'll see graphics close to the original game, although the sprites lack definition. Apart from that, your character moves slowly, the scrolling is awful and hitting the enemies requires patience most of the time. There's a tune playing throughout the game, but it doesn't improve the overall impression of this game.

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4

Eight wacky world events await you in this game – a sack race, plate balancing, river jumping, boot throwing, pole climbing, running up a wall, pillow fighting, and last but not least – pogo. Each event can be practiced, and believe me, if you want to get anywhere with this one, you'd better do that. The controls for each game are different, sluggish and add a high degree of confusion. The graphics are very detailed with good animation, but the rate at which everything moves, mixed with the hard to understand controls, just ruins everything.

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3

The city of Amaurote has been invaded by a plague of giant insects, but instead of getting out a can of fly killer, you have to eradicate them by using bouncing bombs – and with 25 districts of the city to clear, that's some task. The first thing you should try to do is destroy the Queen insect with a Supa Bomb. The isometric view is impressive, but the use of bouncing bombs makes it very difficult to aim them at the insects, and you can't unleash another one until the first has exploded. The game is too difficult and takes much too long to play, but the music is arguably the best of any CPC game!

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3