A - Alien Crush

Developer: Compile / NAXAT

Release Date: August 19th, 1989

Alias: Alien - The Pinball Experience (A-TPE)
Game Type: Pinball

In space... no one can hear you scream.. because of repetition.  I really don't have a Crush on Alien Crush.  Okay okay, I'll probably take some flak for giving this 2 out of 4 health bars, but let me start out by saying I do really dig this game for it's utter uniqueness.. it's just that the gameplay itself leaves something to be desired.

Alien Crush is actually pretty well done considering it was one of the very early titles for the TG 16, and if you're a fan of the pinball genre, then you'll definitely really enjoy this game thanks to it's addictive "just one more game" quality.  Hey, I like pinball, and I really like pinball in video game form, but this isn't exactly a robust gaming experience and had I purchased this one for full price back in '89 I'd most likely be fairly upset about buying it.  It would have taken mowing the lawn 5 times to buy this game... and we had a damn big yard not to mention having to endure the 100+ degree Texas temperatures in the summer, but I digress.

Bonus Screen Wave of Aliens

Of course, it needs to be said that Alien Crush is NOT your average pinball title, it's more like you've been beamed on to an alien ship and are using the ships defenses, which happen to look like a pinball and flippers, to destroy the ship from the inside out.  It's a unique twist on the pinball genre as a whole and a fairly cool vibe... though it just gets extremely repetitive.  This is mainly due in part by the fact there is the one table available to the player which consists of two vertical screens in addition to several bonus "rooms".  Now, the bonus rooms are pretty rad.  They are more like smallish boss battles or battles against waves of enemies... fought with your trusty pinball.  Once again, a cool twist, but not enough to save this game from its pit of self wallowing repetitiveness.

Lower Screen - Which in no way is the Alien Queen 

The art stye consists of some good pixel pushing to be sure... but it feels a little "phoned in" to me.  I mean really, just look at my screen cap to the left, it looks like something lifted straight out of H.R. Geigers concepts from Alien (or more recently... Prometheus).  The producers said ALIEN, and the designers just literally interpreted it.  I suppose this could have been a decent marketing ploy as every teen in America was just coming off of the sci fi / Aliens kick from the mid to late 1980s.  You have facehugger posers, chest burster posers, and an alien queen poser right smack dab in the middle of the bottom screen.  The artists were clearly not ashamed at their blatant.. um... "inspiration"?  To their credit though, the lone pinball board / table is vibrant with life and animations. Some of which are appropriately repulsive, the spider like ball launcher is definitely a thing of nightmares.  Man... I HATE spiders.  To quote Ricky Gervais, they're always eerily in the "ready" position.  Never EVER do you simply see a spider lazing around, laying on its side, just layin there saying "hey dude, whats up?".  Ugh!  Moving on.

Upper Screen - Yup, thats a brain.

The sound and music are fairly well done, but like the artwork, are clearly inspired (read: lifted) from other film scores prominent in the 1980s.  To the game's credit, it does give you the chance to choose one of two pieces of music to listen to while playing.. but one of the tunes just devolves into generic techno rock and the other, well the other is really, really, REALLY close to the infamous Jaws theme by John Williams.  Heck, the bonus screen music is one note shy of being a note for note rendition of the theme from Terminator by Brad Fidel.  The sound design is alright and does the job, but nothing spectacular.

As unique as Alien Crush is, it just gets a bit too repetitive for my taste.  Though I have been finding myself going back again and again over the last day just to try to beat my current high score (2,608,500).  Maybe thats the important thing to take away from this rant / review.  Despite the ripped off art style and music, there is a certain addictive quality to this simplistic game.  A very visceral time sucking feeling that is only rarely accomplished these days in modern games (Minecraft and FTL, I'm looking at you).  But in the end, I found myself getting bored really quickly after feeling like I've seen all there is to see in the game after a fairly limited amount of play time.

Game over man.  Game over.

Here's a gameplay video for you to judge for yourself:

If you still want a copy...   CLICK HERE to search for it on ebay.