Super Aleste (SNES)

I dunno, I fancied another shooter today. And after Gynoug on the Megadrive, I thought I'd hit the comparable system of the time, the SNES, and see what it had to offer.

Super Aleste is a vertically-scrolling effort, which is apparently part of a series. I didn't know about that, I've never played an Aleste game. I might look up some more of them after this one, though...

It starts off in a fairly pedestrian manner... slowly meandering up the screen, with standard baddies ambling towards you. It's once you start collecting power-ups that the true mayhem begins.

Every so often, you'll get a numbered pod. If you collect that pod, you'll get a weapon. There are eight weapons at your disposal, each of which is quite impressive and each of which will serve a different need. Each of these weapons can be levelled-up several times, which results in you becoming quite the death dealer.

The trick, really, is learning which weapon to use at which particular moment. That said, it doesn't matter quite as much on the standard difficulty level... get yourself sufficiently powered-up and you can pretty much plough through anything. Try playing on the hard level and you've got yourself a challenge!

It all sounds pretty standard, but I really liked playing Super Aleste. It's one I could see myself going back to quite often. It's got some very enjoyable gameplay, and a generous but not ridiculous scoring system, so you feel like you've earned those million-plus scores. The name might not sit up there alongside the acknowledged classics, but it's definitely worthy of a bit of anyone's time.