Alien Storm is a 2 player beat-em-up with some shooting mixed. It was originally released on Arcades in 1990, made by Shinobi Team part of Sega of Japan. In 1991 it got ported by Sega of Japan to Sega Mega Drive, where it got bonus modes, only up to 2 players instead of 3 too. And levels got remixed heavily. Not to the point where it's a different game like ESWAT or Shadow Dancer, but certanly not exactly a same thing. 4 Megabit ROM.
And yea, arcade game had few different ports, without remixing levels, on SMS and some computers.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "AlienStorm_USA.SGD".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "AS_PC_MG_EFIGS_US.pdf".
Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.
Sega did a thing where Duel mode, which is 1-player endurance in this game, is accesable only if game detects that there is only one controller connected. Since the Sega Classics Steam emulator always counts that two controllers are connected, you have to use external emulator to be able to play that mode.
Also, music sometimes fails to play. Blame the game itself, move on.
The plot of this game is that aliens stormed down the Earth. Who's weird design is quite interesting to look at, quite freaky, with human faces and such. Kinda similar to Alien Syndrome, slightly, delightfully ugly. And only Alien Buster can stop them, with Arcade version of a game having intro that showed that they work as Alien Burger as well, but of course it got cut.
The game got some options. There is usual sound test, usual control change. There is difficulty setting that changes how much health and damage enemies have, I think. And energy difficulty, which just changes how much starting energy you have for each live. And there is rapid fire option, that only affects shooting mode and running one. You should totally turn it on.
The main part of a game are beat-em-up sections. They are best compared to Golden Axe. Moving up and down, beating things up, not grabbing anybody, still pre-Final Fight era. Still should move up and down to avoid getting beat up. At least this one throws up to 5 enemies at you at a single time. Take that, Golden Axe 1!
It's much faster paced however. And no platforming, no higher ground or pits, sadly.
When you hit an enemy, he gets stunned, which allows you to do further hits. And these are fun, as each character will do random animation, giving them some personality, as well as being humorous, such as beating big alien with backpack for no reason. They also randomly either just do hits, or knock up, or knock away. Not being in control of that is a bit nasty. I have noticed that each character has difference in what kind of move they prefer to do. Guy in red with Thunder Bazooka, Gordon, mostly knocks them up, which is good due to stunning them for a bit longer while still having them in control. Karla, girl in yellow with Fire Blaster knocks them away. Slammmer, cool robot with Electric Whip, mostly just hits them more. That's pretty much the only gameplay difference between characters, everything else is just visual. Though maybe Gordon has slightly more range.
You also have rolling, that is defensive move. It allows you to quickly get away, though you have to be a bit more careful not to roll yourself into corner. Can also do roll attack, which will penetrate through enemies if you keep holding forward on D-Pad. It has weak damage however. You can run by double-tapping D-Pad, and do running attack, which wastes no energy and as good as normal one. Or do jumping and overhead attack, which does great damage but it's even harder to catch enemies with it than in Golden Axe. And yea, you have energy. Screen-Clearing attack wastes a lot of them, normal attacks do very little that you don't have to care.
Just a shame that collision is a bit unfit toward players. It seems that players attack are too thin when comes to in-out (vertical) space. At least enemies try to get onto same line as you, so it's not too bad. Hard to attack stationary ones though.
It also has shooting sections, similar to old light-gun games. But you don't use light-gun, instead good old D-Pad of your controller. Thankfully, game was designed around that, so there are very little cheap shots. It's also fun and even has destructible environment. Just never stop shooting! Unless it's a human. You lose life if you touch them.
It also has two running stages where heroes suddenly go Sonic-gotta-go-fast for no reason and jump over mile-long gap in bridges. Kinda like shumps. Sadly, they are so easy, that they aren't worth attention.
And yep, levels got remixed around compared to Arcade. No more factory, now we got laboratory. Setting isn't as urban, more rural, going into town at times. Arcade had only one boss that shapeshifted into three form. Here they took two forms of his and used it separately. It's still quite a small amount of bosses, but at least these ones are tough. And they still have the best credits ever! You should totally check this out.
Too bad that they didn't fix the final level from being dull. It's just alien maze which tries to kill you by putting you against few same pattern of enemies for each few pixels in each room.
There is also a duel mode. Just play through 9 stages of enemy encounters, ranging from incredibly easy to hellish. Nothing new in this. Pretty nice. Low amount of energy, so gotta use that running attack.
You can also play the main campaign with friend as well. The continues are shared and they are already quite tight, so don't waste those. At least there is no friendly fire in this one. Just same old beat-em-up fun. Though players can tug powerups away in shooting scenes.
And there is 1p vs 2p mode. It's usual silly player vs player mode in beat-em-up, not on same level as Street Fighter. Though at least in this one it's a bit less predictable, being faster paced than Golden Axe. Still same “whoever manages to land the hit”. At least players can avoid getting hit after being knocked out. Whoever wins 2 rounds wins like a winner.
Also to note, the music is quite awesome. Though it's not something that others agree on. But it fits to action none the less.
So yep, another nice beat-em-up, quite hard to beat on first try, but not insane. And has light-hearted side. And it has a good variety of different modes to keep it fresh and fun, without feeling gimmicky.
