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Company Naxat ESRB Rating E for Everyone Release Date US - December 11, 2006 Controllers Wii Remote Classic Controller Gamecube Controller Wii Points 600 Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 Virtual-Turbo

It's easy to dismiss Alien Crush as "just another video pinball game," but those who do so will be missing out on an outstanding Turbografx-16 game.  While it is a pinball game at heart, Alien Crush somehow takes a great Alien theme and manages to craft a very unique and long-lasting pinball gaming experience around it. There's not much to the gameplay, as all you really do is work the various flippers and launch your ball occasionally, but the way Hudson has carefully laid out the levels and sub-levels it all functions together to make the game addictive and fun. Many a sleepless night has been spent flipping that ball around this organic alien-filled pinball machine and somehow even all these years later, the hypnotic draw of this game is still somehow present. Anyone that's played a pinball machine before will have a pretty strong grasp of what this game entails. You basically only use the left side of the control pad and the "A" button to activate the two flippers, and you can even cheat a little bit and bump the table using the "B" button if your ball is stuck or about to drop through your flippers.  Simple enough, right? It would be if there weren't alien life forms strung out all over the pinball board, not to mention the erratic bumpers that will quickly send your ball in any number of directions, and through the flippers at the bottom of the table if you're not careful. Think of it as pinball with an alien twist. Another area of the game that makes things more interesting is the many sublevels. If you can get your ball into one of the alien orrifices at the right moment, you'll be sent off to a sub-level. One such sublevel involves launching your ball at the many floating alien skulls and knocking them into the holes placed around the level. If you can manage to get all of the skulls knocked into the holes before your ball falls through your flippers you'll get a hefty bonus. Most of the sublevel challenges work the same way, but involve different alien life forms and slight variations in the gameplay. They do add a nice change of pace from the standard pinball levels, and will really keep you on your toes as you progress to some of the more difficult sublevels. It's easy to see that Alien Crush was inspired by the Alien movies, as most of the visual elements of the game involve various creatures from the movies, not to mention the backgrounds and ball-launching pod. The pod itself is a dead ringer for the pods in the movies in which the facehuggers jump out from. The visuals are all beautifully drawn and add a nice and spooky aura to the game. Although Alien Crush was one of the earliest Turbografx-16 titles, it still looks fantastic, even all these years later. The huge number of colors on screen was impressive for its time and still is for that matter. Who would have thought that the Alien theme would make for such a spectacular and enjoyable pinball experience. There are a lot of Turbografx-16 titles that have great soundracks, but the moment you hear the tunes in Alien Crush, there's no doubt that a lot of effort was put into these two tracks. You'd think that a game that played the same song throghout the duration of the game would get old after awhile, but these two tracks just project the spooky alien theme to perfection without ever becoming tiresome or repetetive. "Lunar Eclipse" is the better song of the two, but if you get a little tired of it, you can always select "Demon's Undulate" at the options screen for something a little different. It's a little faster-paced, but it's also just as eerie as Lunar Eclipse when you get right down to it. As if the music wasn't great enough, the sound effects in Alien Crush are among the best heard on the Turbografx-16 system. Say what you want to about the Super NES and Sega Genesis sound chips, but the Turbografx-16 sound chip certainly was no slouch either and Alien Crush is a shining example of this. Alien Crush might not be the type of title some people are expecting from the Turbografx-16 library, but it's a perfect title to release for the Wii's Virtual Console. It's simple, well-designed, and is absolutely impossible to put down once you start playing it. Some of the Turbografx-16 games aged better than others and Alien Crush is one of those that aged to perfection. Many Turbo fans rank the sequel, Devil's Crush, above this title, but I can't help but disagree. To me Alien Crush captured the entire Alien theme so perfectly and somehow managed to build an outstanding pinball game around the whole thing. If you appreciate a game that's just downright fun to play, Alien Crush will likely cause you a few sleepless nights just like I has me.