The C64 version of Alien Syndrome was developed by Softek International and published under their ACE label in 1988. It is a very good port of the Sega arcade game, although it does have one issue that might annoy players…

That issue is the fact that the scrolling doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with the movement speed of the player character. What that means is that you can be waiting for the screen to catch up when you’re running around a level. Which isn’t good.

This almost ‘push’ scrolling also means that you have to get very close to the edge of the screen to make the scrolling kick in, which is also very risky. And considering that Alien Syndrome is a notoriously difficult game, this can be a real problem.

The time limits on each level are very tight too, so it’s not as though you can take your sweet time either…

Otherwise, Alien Syndrome is a decent game. The graphics are pretty good, the music is great, and the gameplay is more or less identical to the arcade game – including the two-player coop mode. The only real differences are in the boss battles, which are as close an approximation as they could get on a C64 (they’re still very tough, though).

More: Alien Syndrome on Wikipedia