Play by Play - Alien Storm
By Brian • 22 April 2026
- Year
- 1991
- Platform
- Sega Genesis
- Notes
- The arcade original hit the scene in 1990.
Let’s return to the 1990s, when the people of Earth knew how to unite to handle things like alien invasions. If hostile extra-terrestrials invaded today, half the population would throw in with them to enslave the other half, or otherwise find a way to make a bunch of money off the plight of humanity. In the 90s, you could depend on Jeff Goldblum or some genius to invent an alien-fighting robot and send that thing out into the street to beat the hell out of anything with green skin or tentacles. Stay clear, tree frogs and cephalopods! We don’t want to hurt you—just alien scum.
Then, team the robot up with a guy and a girl, call them the Alien Busters, and wait patiently as they eliminate the terrors from beyond the moon. And when they’re not killing aliens, have them work at a hotdog stand. Hey, it’s not like aliens invade every day—they’ll need a Plan B, right?
That’s Alien Storm, available at your local video arcade or on your Sega Genesis 16-bit home video game console...if the year was 1991. Which it isn’t! So you’ll have to play it on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, or one of 18,000 Sega Genesis compilations released over the years, or perhaps some other means! I played it on Switch Online, so let’s talk about the Genesis version, specifically. Did we calm the titular storm? Did the Alien Busters return to their hotdog stand after the closing credits? Read on, citizen of Earth.
Alien Storm first captured my attention years ago when I discovered it via the Genecyst emulator. While I found it intriguing, I bounced off of it every time I tried to play. It’s a beat ’em up (although, there are other game modes—more on that in a bit), which falls squarely in my wheelhouse, but something felt off about this one. The characters all have ranged attacks, like lasers and rockets and so forth, but combat is all close-quarters, so there’s a certain feel to Alien Storm that didn’t quite make sense to my simpleton brain until I got used to it. Not only that, the slower pace and more meticulous and strategic combat makes Alien Storm feel closer to something like Golden Axe than Streets of Rage. I like Golden Axe, too. A lot, actually. But Alien Storm takes caution to the next mutation. Choosing the right moves at the right time, knowing when to bail rather than risk getting cornered, and keeping a close eye on health and energy levels ensures victory over lizard-brained button-mashing every time. I instinctively want to mash those buttons, but sometimes saving Earth requires a more methodical approach. I feel like there’s some sort of allegory here. Nah, surely not.
Anyway, Craig and I are a couple of (bad enough) dudes always on the lookout for more co-op experiences, so we started playing Alien Storm together on the Switch, which finally gave me the excuse to put in enough time to get over the weird feeling the game initially gave me and just enjoy it, even though the ranged weapons don’t really make sense for a beat ’em up and the combat is less brawling and more technical. It’s like the Bret Hart of beat ’em ups. Maybe Golden Axe is the Dean Malenko of beat ’em ups. I wonder what the Hacksaw Duggan of beat ’em ups could be? Something with purely brawling, no special moves, and no consequences for button-mashing, I guess. Sorry, I will move on from pro wrestling references.
The player chooses one of three characters: the guy, the girl, or the robot. I like to play odd ones out, so I usually go with the robot. His name is Slammer, according to the manual, but I’ve seen conflicting reports that his name is Scooter, which I like a little better, so let’s go with that. He attacks with a laser whip primarily, but will also annihilate aliens with missiles that pop out of his shoulders, guns in his legs, and sometimes he’ll even pull a lead pipe out of somewhere. I don’t know what determines which attack the robot uses. Distance from enemy? Amount of health enemy has left? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The robot is cool and full of weapons. Not only that, for his special attack, he self-destructs, clearing the screen of enemies (unless they’re really tough), leaving just his head behind. As the dust settles, a replacement robot body runs onto the screen and puts the head back on, resuming the fight. What a nice touch! It’s the charm we’ve come to expect from late 80s/early 90s Sega, which is the same company that created an end sequence for Golden Axe in which the characters break out of the arcade machine and run amok across town. Ridiculous!
So, the Busters hit the streets and engage the enemy through neighborhoods, shopping malls, and downtown, taking on all sorts of weirdos—little gremlin-looking things that claw and spit, flying creatures with sucker mouths and big beefy hands they use to piledrive heroes, and even oversized snails that use trashcans and ashtrays and other scenery as their shells. Enemy designs are cool all around, especially the tentacle aliens that look like piles of gross heads oozing around the screen. One of its attacks is a green, more humanoid alien that climbs out of its mouth and pulls the player in! Just an unhinged design, and these enemies are tough and fast and numerous, too, so Craig and I constantly have all kinds of trouble with these things. They look great, like something out of a Splatterhouse game, but man I hate them.
I mentioned the meticulous combat earlier. There’s a rhythm to striking aliens, so proper timing of attacks works better than button-mashing. But, it’s never very easy to do that, since the aliens are opportunistic jerks who corner and/or surround the Busters at every chance they get. Fortunately, the C button triggers a dodging roll for getting out of trouble. Attacking mid-roll delivers a diving attack that’s good for crowd control and creating some distance between the Busters and the aliens, but the recovery time is long, so a missed dive attack can be costly, and you’ll look like an idiot, too! Don’t mess this up!
Apparently, you can also run by double-tapping left or right on the D-pad, and you can attack an enemy while running past it, and these moves are distinct from the dodge and dive attack. I haven’t been able to incorporate the run/running attack into my moveset, yet. I just do a lot of dodging and diving. Using all of these moves at the right times becomes important because health pickups are sparse and lives are not plentiful, and the aliens will whittle away at the Busters any way they can. It’s a war of attrition, so be smart and careful with your combat choices. The aliens are also annoyingly good at scoring cheap hits and interrupting the players’ combos. How many times have we wailed away on our enemies, only to see our efforts wasted as they casually nope out of their beatings to grab and stuff us into their gaping maws? It’s exactly the kind of foul play I’ve come to expect from this fun, but brutal genre.
Not only does the player have to manage health and lives, but also energy, another resource with its own meter. Attacking—yes, even the basic attack—consumes energy, so without it, the player is more or less useless. Craig and I quickly learned to conserve energy and avoid button-mashing or excessive use of attacks. The special screen-clearing attacks deplete a significant amount of energy, so I try my best to use them sparingly. I’ll fire one off to wear down a boss, or when the screen gets so crowded with foes that I know I’ll take an unacceptable amount of damage if I don’t clear it immediately. It adds an extra layer of resource management that I wouldn’t normally expect from this kind of game. It’s a clever way to keep us honest as players, but man, I’m already so stressed out about these aliens, I wish I didn’t have to worry about maintaining an energy reserve, too.
While I’m talking about energy, I wanted to touch on the other two game modes where energy plays a big part. The end of most levels features a first-person shooting gallery sequence, where the Busters battle aliens in warehouses, convenience stores, electronics stores, and more. Aliens take cover behind shelves and boxes, and the Busters blast them as they come into view. The scenery is destructible, as well, and shooting it sometimes reveals energy or health packs. I love these shooting sequences. They add to the B-movie vibe of the experience (and finally put our ranged weapons to actual use), but it’s so fun to shoot everything in sight that great care must be taken to not shoot excessively so as not to burn through too much energy—keep those bursts short and controlled if any energy is to remain by the end of the game. The same philosophy applies to the two scrolling-shooter sequences at the end of Missions 2 and 6. Here, it’s especially easy to hold down the fire button and pepper any and all incoming threats. But again, without taking care, it may mean running out of energy at a truly inopportune time. Whoops!
Even on the easiest difficulty setting, Craig and I haven’t managed to defeat Alien Storm together, but I got obsessed and started playing it on my own, and was able to beat it on a solo run last weekend. I think the difference lies in the credits available—in the co-op mode, both players share the same pool of credits, but on a solo run, one player has access to the whole pool. I know that having two players should make the game easier, but as often as players get overwhelmed by swarming aliens, and as often as they manage to sneak cheap hits in between player attacks, I don’t know that it’s always necessarily the case. So I can tell you about my successful solo run, also on the easiest setting.
After completing the penultimate level, the aliens get really mad and send their mothership to abduct the Busters. Aboard the mothership (shaped like a giant alien head, which feels only appropriate for this game), the final level begins, and it turns out it’s a maze! Each corridor has multiple doors at the end, and taking the correct series of doors brings the Busters to the final boss. I didn’t take the time to take any notes or do any mapping, but I managed to accidentally make my way to the ship’s core twice, where I encountered a giant brain with a mess of minions. Attrition did me in on my first encounter—I arrived in the chamber with little health remaining and didn’t stand a chance.
However, that was the farthest I’d ever made it, so I was encouraged to try again as soon as possible. I had a free Saturday morning when my wife left for a conference early and the kids slept in, so I loaded up Alien Storm, alien-busted my way to the mothership core once again, and lobotomized the giant brain like only an alien-fighting robot can! With the mission accomplished, the mothership explodes, and our heroes escape back to Earth via some kind of space bubble, then do a little dance during the end credits.
Craig and I tried one more time since then, and we made it to the final level for the first time, but with no lives or energy left, our world-saving attempt fell short. But, I think that’s the farthest we’ve made it yet, so maybe there’s hope for us. Maybe with some more practice, Craig and I could beat it on Normal? Maybe even Hard? Well, let’s not get carried away here.
That’s Alien Storm! I’m glad I finally gave this game the chance it deserved. It’s infuriating, sure, but the fun? The style? The ridiculous digitized screams of civilians as aliens wreak havoc around them? It’s all here! If you like your beat ’em ups with some strategy and methodology mixed in, this one is for you! Wishing you all the best on your eventual graduation from Easy mode.
Thanks for reading, and see you next mission!
Shoutout to PepsimanVsJoe's Videogame Blog for its review on Alien Storm, which provided me some tips to finally see the end of this game.
