Alien Syndrome

Copyright : Sega | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Alien Syndrome was developed in 1987 by Sega Enterprises, since it?s release the basic idea of the game has been cloned time and time again to bring better (in some cases worse) versions of a simple idea, Amiga fans need only look as far as Alien Breed to see what we mean.

Aliens have infested a space craft and are holding the human colony hostage inside egg like shells, it?s up to you to go into the infested areas of the ship and rescue all surviving human life if we are to have any hope of survival...good luck.

Graphics

The arcade was rich in colour and had vibrant graphics, this kind of graphics wasn?t available until some time later when the Amiga was released and developers such as Team 17 released Alien Breed into the home.

However the graphics in the Amstrad conversion are far from being arcade perfect with a distinct lack of colour and detail throughout the game it?s not overly bad but those that expect a near perfect conversion of every arcade should think twice before grabbing this game. The basic levels have been constructed almost perfect to the original so those that can easily walk around the arcade should come to grips with this one pretty easily.

Our biggest problem graphics wise is the fact that it slows down dramatically when walking down the screen, the game is created using at least MODE 1 which any Amstrad user will tell you is a pretty big and blocky pixel mode and anything created in this resolution should run at a fairly high speed.

Sound

The sound system is however a very good attempt by ACE software (the converters) with a nice computerised version of the theme and some spooky sound effects while playing the game itself, the game over effect is also quite cool.

Gameplay

As for gameplay well if you mastered the arcade you shouldn?t have a problem with this one but the unresponsive control system and the slow down generated when moving up or down the screen may put a few gamers off returning to the game. Of course all this could have been the emulator but once we tried it on the real thing (my Amstrad!) it was obvious that the problem was in the game and not the coding of the emulator.

Like most Sega conversions it could have been done a lot better than it has but with Sega not behind the conversion process of Alien Syndrome we can?t really blame them...shame on you ACE.