Aleste is a very storied shmup franchise. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m not overly familiar with it. I own one installment on the Sega CD, but besides that I had little idea about it. That is until I picked up my very own MSX along with a copy of Aleste. I dove in to this venerable game with an open mind. I really like this type of game (even though I’m not particularly good at shooters of this sort) and Aleste won me over right from the start. This game quickly became one of my favorite vertical shooters of all time, and that’s quite a compliment.
I don’t speak Japanese so you’ll have to forgive my rudimentary understanding of the story here. From the opening cut-scene (complete with anime portraits) I was able to gather that Aleste takes place in a shooter, and stars a pilot who is called to action when his girlfriend is blown up in a building. I know that’s pretty vague and blunt, but that’s exactly what it looks like. At least the anime still screens are nicely drawn. I was very impressed with them.
From here you’re thrown right into the action. Aleste is a top down vertically scrolling shooter wherein you, in typical fashion, pilot a space ship equipped with forward shooting lasers. You’re attacked by an onslaught of foes that approach from off-screen; some shoot weapons at you while others use their movement patterns to make you crash into them. Your ship can only take one hit before it blows up and you spawn again. Thankfully you’re thrown right back into the action instead of starting all over again, but on the downside you have limited lives and a continue system that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I was able to make it to the end but believe you me it took a lot of practice.
What’s particularly interesting in Aleste is the weapon system. You have your basic laser blast that doesn’t change much (collecting ‘P’s makes it barely bigger), but a sub-weapon that does. By default your sub weapon can fire in all directions and goes opposite the direction you’re holding on the directional pad. You can change your weapon by collecting power-ups. Each of these is given a number, and you’ll find the same number on multiple ones. Each digit (1-9) represents a different weapon. These vary mostly in their trajectory and how useful each one is depends entirely on your play style. What’s cool is that if you dodge all of the others and go only for a specific number the sub-weapon will become more powerful. It’s a genuinely interesting system in a genre that usually banks on simple gimmicks.
Aleste is also unique in that you can destroy most enemy projectiles. It feels like you’re fighting for real estate on the screen and have to take risks dodging in to enemy territory to free up parts of the screen so you can snag power-ups. The action is intense; once the game starts it’s pure mayhem from start to finish. Unlike in other shooters it’s not difficult to track where you are and the best way to play is by watching your ship and dodging/destroying anything that comes at you. The most interesting thing about Aleste however is that the gameplay is adaptive. As you change weapons enemy patterns and placements are altered. This means you can’t get by with simple memorization and you need to practice more than usual in this case.
The game isn’t perfect though by any means. There’s a fair amount of flicker that can cause real-life issues such as not being able to tell where enemy ships are. This is more of a minor annoyance than anything because any skilled player will be able to track their location regardless but it is noticeable. The next big issue I have with this title is the boss encounters. These just aren’t interesting, and this is an element you expect developers to go big or go home when it comes to this genre. In every case you’re pitted against a series of different still targets that must all be destroyed, and when they are you move on to the next area. The sub-bosses are the same, and in the final encounter they just throw more targets at you. It’s boring.
Last but not least we have the weapon system. The enemy waves become more manageable as you power-up, but when you die you start back with the basic special weapon. As if simply losing a life wasn’t enough now you’re poorly equipped for dealing with the massive number of enemies. It’s like in Gradius, but certainly not as detrimental here but it’s still an annoying feature.
Aleste looks really good for an MSX title. The sprites are varied, detailed, and very colorful compared to many other games on the platform. I really liked the opening stage with the psuedo 3D perspective on the buildings below. It reminded me of Vertical Force on the Virtual Boy and that’s not a bad thing. Other stages are a bit boring with your typical grassy plains, plants, etc. The screen scrolling is not completely smooth but it’s decent enough. The soundtrack fares even better than the visuals with high energy electronic/rock sounding music. It fits the sci-fi anime theme perfectly. It might be bleeps and blips but it’s significantly better than what home consoles were at back then.
I was surprised with just how much I liked this one. Shooters were not in short supply back in its day and just solid gameplay often wasn’t enough to stand out from the pack. Aleste truly excels with its adaptive design, weapon system, and pure on-screen carnage. Few times I’ve purely enjoyed a shooter that continuously kicked my butt without getting totally frustrated. It’s a shame Aleste wasn’t a bigger name in this part of the world (the Sega Master System port was named something else) because this could have competed with the big boys.
