Alien Syndrome is a SEGA Arcade Classic ported to the Master System. Your mission is to rescue all the hostages off spaceships and defeat the stage boss, before the time bomb goes off that will explode the ship you’re onboard. Here’s the thing about this game, it’s Very Easy. Or, at least it should have been. Nope. The game devs designed this port to be artificially difficult. The enemy aliens spawn randomly on screen, so if you’re not constantly moving, they can spawn right on top of you, which instantly kills you. Your gun fire is misaligned. If you’re shooting left to right, your shot comes straight from the center of your sprite. If you’re shooting any other direction, your shot is offset and it’s a constant struggle to get your alignment right. The stage boss hit box is so small, shooting it means nothing, unless you hit it pixel perfect. And the game speed movement is so inconsistent. I can be crawling across the screen, then suddenly smoothly speeding off. And in a game that requires perfect precision, this can cost you your lives.
I can see why they did this though. They didn’t want us breezing through the game in one afternoon. But, still, there are better ways to pad out a game than making it artificially difficult. After recording, I kept playing. Not because I was having fun, but I wanted to beat this unfair challenge. I could never make it past stage two.
Alien Syndrome on the SEGA Master System is a hard recommendation. It’s just so unfairly difficult. If you like being challenged, give it a try. Otherwise skip and just play the original arcade version.