Alien Syndrome -- All In One.

SEGA released Alien Syndrome in the arcades in 1987, a year after the movie Aliens was released in theaters.  Alien Syndrome is clearly inspired by the film. The game has you boarding space ships and space stations that have been infested with aliens. You play the lone male or female hero, whose job it is to rescue any survivors, and to blow up the ship or station. The aliens have the human survivors held in cocoon like pods scattered throughout the levels. At the start of each level you get the message 'the time bomb is set' and you only have a certain amount of time to rescue enough survivors to unlock the escape hatch, where the boss of the stage conveniently awaits. As you wander the corridors of the maze like levels you'll come across panels in the walls that contain different weapons. You have your standard shot to start, and you can find flame, bomb, or laser based weaponry. You can power those up additionally. For example, the flame weapon at level one shoots bursts of fire, whereas at level two it becomes a constant stream like a flame-thrower. There are also map panels that allow you to see the design of the level and dots for each of the remaining survivors. It's a timed maze game where you collect enough keys to open the door and fight the boss with an Aliens design. The arcade game has six stages and a seventh final boss. The PlayStation 2 update was released as SEGA Ages 2500 Series Volume 14 ~ Alien Syndrome in Japan. The game offers a single mode with the standard three difficulty levels. They added a stat tracking system so you can compete for the best score across individual levels and overall. They now count hit combos just as an aspect of the stat tracking. They also added a smart bomb to the game. A great addition to this version is eight-way fire to the right stick on the Dual Shock. The original game was brightly colored and cartoon looking. They've tried to make the game much more moody and menacing. The first level is rather black and the enemies are really bright glowing shades of red and green and purple. It's a great contrast. Unfortunately it's only a design used for the first level. I would have loved to have seen it used for all of them. They've replicated the levels rather well in design. The bosses were the star of the original arcade game. You wanted to clear the level just to see what the next really cool and freaky boss would be. This version of the game retains most of the bosses from the original although they've been moved around. The arcade's level one boss for example is now the boss of level two. The graphics for the first level are something I really liked. The rest of the game has decent enough graphics. The sound is okay. They didn't use the really dark music of the original. I wish they had. It's a short, but fun enough game. I'm going to give it a 7.5.

Next up is Out Run.