Alien Crush

Devil's Crush isn't the only pinball game worth playing on the Turbo Grafx-16, and I could post twice about Devil's Crush without considering its predecessor, Alien Crush. Both games are amazing, and if you like one, you'll enjoy the other for the sake of variety.

Many reviewers complain about the split screen in Alien Crush. But unlike Devil's Crush, in Alien Crush the board is designed to keep the ball at the top. The screen switch never presents a huge problem, and should not deter potential gamers. I suspect I'm writing to a mainly Wii audience on this one, because just about every TG-16 owner has at least one copy of this game. Pinball was serious business in the '80s.

The sci-fi theme remains me of the Alien movies, but the bonus-levels remind me more of 8-Bit shooters. Little alien monsters and snakes and bio-terrors crawl around the board. Bumpers transform into skeleton monsters and crawl around, and eyeballs open and close everywhere. The two music tracks and game speed (seriously, again, who choses the slow option?) provide a little variety to an otherwise self-similar game.

My best strategy involves opening up the big alien's mouth by hitting the 6 snake/monsters on the sides of the bottom screen. Then, launch the ball into the alien's mouth and you'll get a bonus stage. These stages are brutal, but provide a lot of points. If you beat the stage, you'll get a multiplier, and can really rack up a high score.

You need 2,000,000,000 points to beat the game. Have fun.

It's really easy to kill an hour playing one set of credits on Alien Crush, and you can't say that about most classic games. I highly recommend it if you can't get enough of Devil's Crush and need some more extreme pinball action.