Leger vs. Alien Crush Returns (Wii)

Certainly Compile showed their muscles with Alien Crush. Not by doing something as technically impressive as whatever shmup they ever released, but by going H.R. Giger in a pinball context.

While keeping almost conceptually true to pinball machines as seen in the arcades, it still very much played around with the virtual possibilites by adding stuff a mechanical machine would not be able to produce.

Never going beyond the easy to pick up and play affair it needed to be to make a mark on the market.

Quite celeverly set up, one did not really have to bother about the fact that Alien Crush originally was released back in 1988 on the in the west rather obscure PC-Engine, here known as the TurboGrafx-16, since Nintendo with the Wii in 2006 reintroduced the console with their digital retro service; Virtual Console.

A year and a half later Wii Ware launched, and with it came the need for some software to showcase the service. Hudson, involved with NEC on the PC-Engine, took that very opportunity to go back to Alien Crush, put Tamsoft (partly of Toaplan fame) behind the wheel and produce a follow up with the added Returns to the title.

Then came the trailer, which in all honesty made things look rather terrific. A pumping technotic track, some truly disgusting intestine looking things coupled with classic pinballing glory not shying away from including bossfights and such.

Wow.

After a couple of hours of actually playing the game it will become rather obvious, though, that something certainly seems to be missing.

The tables (all three of them aswell as two boss battles) while nicely presentend from an aesthetical point of view just seem to be lacking.

Alien Crush Returns puts most focus on a short story mode, where a table is cleared once enough aliens are killed or a boss goes down. Going for multipliers is not really a thing, since all the lights to be triggered are gone from the tables.

The story mode is quickly beaten, no matter what difficulty setting chosen, and playing the tables for high scores shows just how barren they actually are.

You could go on for hours, with the game seemingly helping you out in all kinds of ways to keep the ball going. Hitting the same bumpers, killing the same enemies, over and over again.

I just could not bother to keep playing until I ran out of balls.

Considering the online services (the official ones, at least) have been shut down things are kept local and the DLC (such as a new table and some few time limited ball modifying features besides the ones included in the base package) are nowhere to be found.

Not that it matters, since nothing of the sorts makes the game more fun to play and the features already included (such as giving the ball a short period of boost or making it inverse its motion) are seldom attractive to use.

The Crush series in the hands of Compile may not have been the best of digital pinballs ever, but just comparing how fun it still is to play Alien Crush to this borefest makes me feel that Tamsoft had no clue whatsoever what makes a pinball game fun to play.

A good presentation with nice graphics, pleasant music (though, the awesome music from the trailer is unfortunately only to be heard in the rare bonus rooms to be found) and decent ball physics is simply never enough.

Some classic pinball elements, lights to trigger, modes to active (besides the multiball) and multipliers to activate, would have made a world of difference.

Do not bother about this one.

No.