Alien Rescue

The Good
There was an epic space battle in which your team lost, and any remaining survivors were placed in life capsules and sent out to drift aimlessly through space. These same capsules eventually ran out of fuel and crash-landed on a nearby planet. You are now the commander sent out to pick up these capsules and transport them to the mothership orbiting above, while avoiding the projectiles coming from the gun skimming the planet’s surface.

It is best to take down the gun before getting a capsule (achieved by hovering over it and pressing the fire button). When you do, you have about ten seconds to carry them off to the mothership before the gun reappears. If you drop the capsules into the mothership, it takes them away to a safe haven before returning, then another capsule drops to take its place. Make sure not to be in the one place; they have the tendency to drop right on top of you. If you are hit by a projectile, or touch a capsule or the mothership, you lose a life. Losing all your lives means the game is over.

This game plays like Lunar Rescue but it is quite easy, given that there are no obstacles you have to deal with on the way back, other than the gun itself. If you are playing the game at the maximum skill level, it is quite a challenge; your craft is sped up, and the moving gun shoots every five seconds. The green craft looks good, and the mothership is quite colorful. I think the sound effects are excellent; I like the way the mothership hums at different pitches depending on what it is doing, and you always know when your craft has latched onto a capsule. I like how there are instructions before the start of the game, and each paragraph is different colors to make them stand out.

The Bad
It is too easy to crash into the life capsules as you have to get up close before you can pick them up, and it is also difficult to drop one into the mothership since it moves all the time.

The Bottom Line
In Alien Rescue, you have to pick up life capsules being dropped onto the planet’s surface and carry them off to the mothership. The game is simple to get through, and the graphics and sound are quite good. Unfortunately, unlike other games from the early Eighties, I found myself not playing this game after a few weeks.