This LP was originally posted February fourth, 2018, and was my first since going on hiatus partway through Link's Awakening almost four years earlier. It was intended as a quick and easy project, so it's less thorough than most of my earlier stuff (and a lot shorter). It was the last one I made with my (ridiculous) old method of GIF production, i.e. taking screenshots of every frame and building the GIF with them. For the one after this I switched to recording video, greatly speeding up production.
Hello hello, and welcome to Let's Play Alien Storm! We'll be playing the Sega Master System version because that's what I played as a kid and what I recently got back into. If you watch the title screen closely at the end you'll see a letter S appear at the end. That's because I'm using cheat mode (on controller two hold up and press button 1, then 2, then 1 again to make the S appear, then in game press up on controller 2 to restore full health and energy or either button to skip to the next level) to skip around to the highlights.
Here's the character select. The SMS version is single player and is missing the third character (Karen). I did a couple runs to get shots, so both characters will appear. Character choice makes no gameplay difference that I could see.
Mission 1's title screen. There are four missions, each of which has two to six stages.
Those of you who've read my previous LPs might remember that I'm not good at video games. Here's the robot taking hits from the easiest enemies in the game. My excuses: I got the roll and attack buttons mixed up, and I was trying to show off the different attacks. They're just different animations, everything in these belt scrolling stages dies in one hit (bosses aside). Which attack gets used is determined by distance from the enemy, so I took hits trying to get close for different attacks. The power ups at the end are energy for my special attack, which I'll use later.
This is less embarrassing. These trash can snails are the equal easiest enemies in the game, just coming towards you to be hit.
Here's the other character showing off his moves. Took me a while to find the right distance for that punch at the end.
Let's skip ahead to stage 2, the game's second gameplay type. You shoot at enemies and smash up the joint. Sometimes when you break a background tile a health pickup will drop. The green and silver enemies take two hits and will throw projectiles at you if you don't kill them quickly enough. The yellow guys only take one hit to kill, but attack so quickly that if your cursor is on the far side of the screen when they attack you can't get to them before taking a hit. The screen fading out isn't the end of the stage, it's just me using the cheat to skip to the next.
Mission 2 stage one is another belt scroller, I've skipped it for this running stage, the game's third gameplay type. These are the easiest, I'm not sure I've taken a hit in one outside of the boss fight in mission four.
These guys will probably take more of your HP than anything else over the course of the game. They aren't super hard, my performance here notwithstanding, but they can't be hit during their lunge. So you just wait for them to land, moving away if you need to, and then hit them. It's a bit tougher when you're backed up against the edge of the screen or they're coming from both sides, but remember that you can't be hit while rolling and use that to get to a better position.
Here are some new enemies that show up in mission 3. The worms are like the lunging guys from earlier stages but with a shorter jump. The purple guys (are they wearing robes?) just come at you and take a swing. They're pretty easy. Both have the potential to spawn the little heads, which move towards you but don't deal damage and drop health or energy restores when killed. The risk with the heads is that you can only hit one enemy at a time and your character seems to prioritise them over actual threats, so if you try to attack something before it attacks you and a head is underfoot you're gonna take a hit.
At the end of 3-1 we get our first boss. It just comes at you, and despite what you see in the .gif, it's not that hard to land a hit and then roll through it to get away. I gave up and started using the special attack (not recommended at this point if you're not cheating, it's more necessary later): ballistic missile. It kills all normal enemies on screen or does way more damage to a boss than a regular attack. You do it by hitting both buttons at once. All the rolling I do before the bombs start dropping is me trying and failing to activate it.
3-2's another shooting stage, mostly featuring the new enemy seen here, which appears and quickly jumps at you. Unlike the yellow enemies in earlier stages, it takes long enough that you've got a shot even if your cursor is across the screen when it appears, but they appear in much greater numbers. I skipped the stage pretty quickly this time, but it's actually fairly tense and engaging playing without cheats.
There's another boss at the end of mission 3. Again my performance is shocking and I wind up hitting the skip button. It's pretty easy if you're patient. Just move in to attack between lightnings and roll to the other side when you run out of space. This .gif features the robot's special attack, self-destruct. I assume the flashing background looks less terrible on a CRT.
4-1 has my favourite moment in the game: the ridiculous jump over the broken bridge. It's sort of reasonable when you're a robot, but what about when you're playing a dude:
Just ridiculous and sweet.
Here's 4-2. You fight a few waves of enemies outside the alien ship, then the boss from 3-1 again.
4-3 is the hardest level in the game, and this is all I have to show of it. It's got spikes that come up from the floor in some places (not shown) and a new enemy that moves faster than anything else and has a projectile (also not shown). I save all my special weapon energy for the end of this stage when there's about a half dozen waves of that enemy. It's not enough to take them all out, but it helps.
At the end of 4-3 you can choose between two doors, leading to 4-4 or 4-5. Each is a boss fight. My recording stopped accidentally here, but I wound up bombing it into submission because having cheat mode on sapped me of the strength of character to do it properly.
4-5 is this guy. This is the route I took the one time I beat this without cheats, and I got here with only one spare hit but made it through (I had a continue left which got me through the last stage), so it's a fairly easy boss, again despite my performance in the .gif. Wait for it to use its explosion attack, then hit it, then run away and repeat.
The last stage! There's pretty much constant action in this one, but a lot of the enemies don't actually seem to do anything. I'm not sure if you have to shoot the brain at the back or just survive all the enemies to win.
The brain exploding. I win!
And the ending. There are more credits than this, but just the one image. Thanks for reading!
Hello hello, and welcome to Let's Play Alien Storm! We'll be playing the Sega Master System version because that's what I played as a kid and what I recently got back into. If you watch the title screen closely at the end you'll see a letter S appear at the end. That's because I'm using cheat mode (on controller two hold up and press button 1, then 2, then 1 again to make the S appear, then in game press up on controller 2 to restore full health and energy or either button to skip to the next level) to skip around to the highlights.
Here's the character select. The SMS version is single player and is missing the third character (Karen). I did a couple runs to get shots, so both characters will appear. Character choice makes no gameplay difference that I could see.
Mission 1's title screen. There are four missions, each of which has two to six stages.
Those of you who've read my previous LPs might remember that I'm not good at video games. Here's the robot taking hits from the easiest enemies in the game. My excuses: I got the roll and attack buttons mixed up, and I was trying to show off the different attacks. They're just different animations, everything in these belt scrolling stages dies in one hit (bosses aside). Which attack gets used is determined by distance from the enemy, so I took hits trying to get close for different attacks. The power ups at the end are energy for my special attack, which I'll use later.
This is less embarrassing. These trash can snails are the equal easiest enemies in the game, just coming towards you to be hit.
Here's the other character showing off his moves. Took me a while to find the right distance for that punch at the end.
Let's skip ahead to stage 2, the game's second gameplay type. You shoot at enemies and smash up the joint. Sometimes when you break a background tile a health pickup will drop. The green and silver enemies take two hits and will throw projectiles at you if you don't kill them quickly enough. The yellow guys only take one hit to kill, but attack so quickly that if your cursor is on the far side of the screen when they attack you can't get to them before taking a hit. The screen fading out isn't the end of the stage, it's just me using the cheat to skip to the next.
Mission 2 stage one is another belt scroller, I've skipped it for this running stage, the game's third gameplay type. These are the easiest, I'm not sure I've taken a hit in one outside of the boss fight in mission four.
These guys will probably take more of your HP than anything else over the course of the game. They aren't super hard, my performance here notwithstanding, but they can't be hit during their lunge. So you just wait for them to land, moving away if you need to, and then hit them. It's a bit tougher when you're backed up against the edge of the screen or they're coming from both sides, but remember that you can't be hit while rolling and use that to get to a better position.
Here are some new enemies that show up in mission 3. The worms are like the lunging guys from earlier stages but with a shorter jump. The purple guys (are they wearing robes?) just come at you and take a swing. They're pretty easy. Both have the potential to spawn the little heads, which move towards you but don't deal damage and drop health or energy restores when killed. The risk with the heads is that you can only hit one enemy at a time and your character seems to prioritise them over actual threats, so if you try to attack something before it attacks you and a head is underfoot you're gonna take a hit.
At the end of 3-1 we get our first boss. It just comes at you, and despite what you see in the .gif, it's not that hard to land a hit and then roll through it to get away. I gave up and started using the special attack (not recommended at this point if you're not cheating, it's more necessary later): ballistic missile. It kills all normal enemies on screen or does way more damage to a boss than a regular attack. You do it by hitting both buttons at once. All the rolling I do before the bombs start dropping is me trying and failing to activate it.
3-2's another shooting stage, mostly featuring the new enemy seen here, which appears and quickly jumps at you. Unlike the yellow enemies in earlier stages, it takes long enough that you've got a shot even if your cursor is across the screen when it appears, but they appear in much greater numbers. I skipped the stage pretty quickly this time, but it's actually fairly tense and engaging playing without cheats.
There's another boss at the end of mission 3. Again my performance is shocking and I wind up hitting the skip button. It's pretty easy if you're patient. Just move in to attack between lightnings and roll to the other side when you run out of space. This .gif features the robot's special attack, self-destruct. I assume the flashing background looks less terrible on a CRT.
4-1 has my favourite moment in the game: the ridiculous jump over the broken bridge. It's sort of reasonable when you're a robot, but what about when you're playing a dude:
Just ridiculous and sweet.
Here's 4-2. You fight a few waves of enemies outside the alien ship, then the boss from 3-1 again.
4-3 is the hardest level in the game, and this is all I have to show of it. It's got spikes that come up from the floor in some places (not shown) and a new enemy that moves faster than anything else and has a projectile (also not shown). I save all my special weapon energy for the end of this stage when there's about a half dozen waves of that enemy. It's not enough to take them all out, but it helps.
At the end of 4-3 you can choose between two doors, leading to 4-4 or 4-5. Each is a boss fight. My recording stopped accidentally here, but I wound up bombing it into submission because having cheat mode on sapped me of the strength of character to do it properly.
4-5 is this guy. This is the route I took the one time I beat this without cheats, and I got here with only one spare hit but made it through (I had a continue left which got me through the last stage), so it's a fairly easy boss, again despite my performance in the .gif. Wait for it to use its explosion attack, then hit it, then run away and repeat.
The last stage! There's pretty much constant action in this one, but a lot of the enemies don't actually seem to do anything. I'm not sure if you have to shoot the brain at the back or just survive all the enemies to win.
The brain exploding. I win!
And the ending. There are more credits than this, but just the one image. Thanks for reading!
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