ALIEN SYNDROME

 ALIEN SYNDROME is an adaptation of a Sega arcade game. It allows for one or two
simultaneous players, and offers joystick control for one or two players, or
joystick and keyboard control for two players. (This review is based on the
IBM-PC version.)

 Aliens have overrun a Human colony. Your mission is to rescue captured
colleagues and kill aliens (of course). You start the game with a rifle, and can
upgrade weapons by bumping into marked caches in the walls of the colony sector.
There is a time limit, as you must exit each stage before the sector's
self-destruct timer reaches zero. You have three "lives" in which to accomplish
your task. You "reincarnate" at the same point where you previously died,
instead of restarting from the beginning.

 The game displays an overhead view of a small area of the sector, centered on
the player characters. If two people play, the game limits movement so that both
characters appear onscreen at all times. Weapon caches are located in various
corners of the sector, and map "screens" on the wall can be viewed by bumping
into them. The map shows the layout of the sector, and the location of captured
colleagues. Captives may be freed by bumping into them (they appear as
struggling figures mired to the floor by alien muck).

 Among the various weapons you can select are a flame-thrower and a laser rifle.
(The documentation states that different weapons are more effective against
certain "Super Aliens.") An escort robot may be picked up to follow you and fire
in the same general direction that you fire.

 Various different-colored crawlies come after you, some shooting eggs (?). You
die if you come in contact with any of these. When self-destruct nears, you can
escape from the exit hatch at the top of the sector. Of course, you must face
the sector's "Super Alien" first.... If you succeed, you advance to a more
difficult level, and so on.

 As I noted above, control of the game is via joystick; a mouse may be used in
place of a joystick, however. I struggled to control the game with either. In
many cases, the game refused to respond to the joystick. The mouse is much more
responsive, but the character runs in the direction that the mouse is moved.
This makes it difficult to turn to fire at an alien without charging at it --
bad tactics, to say the least.

 ALIEN SYNDROME comes on two copy-protected 5-1/4" diskettes. There is an
undocumented installation batch file program that transfers the game files to
your hard drive, and updates the "install count" on the master diskette. There
is a corresponding uninstall batch file if you wish to remove the game from your
hard drive. The installation worked fine on my IBM-XT, but I lost it the next
time I defragmented my hard drive; make sure to uninstall the program before
doing anything similar to your machine. The game can be run directly from the
floppy disks, even after the install has been used. (Note: The floppies and
install program directly reference the A: drive. This caused problems when I
tried to load the program on my 386 PC, where drive B: is the 5-1/4" floppy.)

 The game uses the PC speaker for sound effects. Weapon firing and impacts are
fairly standard; there are some digitized effects for an alien's roar, a "Hurry
Up!" when time runs low, and an "Uggh!" when the character is killed. They're
not state-of-the-art, but add a nice touch to a simple game like this.

 The game graphics are fairly well detailed and colored (EGA-level). The
packaging states that the game supports CGA, EGA, MCGA, VGA, and Tandy graphics.

 ALIEN SYNDROME appears to be a nice, basic, run-around-and-shoot-em-up arcade
game, transferred nicely to the PC arena. Due to the difficulties I had in
controlling the game, I can't personally recommend it, although it's possible
that other players won't experience the same problems.

 ALIEN SYNDROME is published and distributed by Sega of America.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253