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Those Freaky Aliens

Posted by Sjixxxy on August 23, 2001

What does Hello Kitty, Bukkake, and cartoons that induce mass seizures have in common? They are all Japanese, and they all are nearly impossible to comprehend. Sitting right up there on the shelf next to those items is a little ROM I played that was titled “Those Freaky Aliens.”

After playing the game, I am led to believe that whoever named it was in the same state of confusion that I was left in, and just title the rom file in a manner that they best could to sum it up. From here on out, I will be calling the game by the title that I feel is more appropriate given the experience of playing this game. From here on this game will be referred to as “Pyro Panties Phunhouse” since I don’t know a lick of Japanese to verify the name.

Fire, lighning bolts, and a half naked chick. What more does a game need?

The plot of this game seems to be similar to the work turned out by the crazies down at the local nut house. You play a cat girl who is continually trying to escape burning buildings, often while wearing nothing but a bra and panties. This girl also has the abilities to shoot little lightning bolts, which leads me to believe she is also a pyromaniac, considering everywhere she seems to go ends up in flames with her hightailing it out of there. Convenient little trick to start some fires wouldn’t you say?

After lighting the fire, she has to escape though the building by working her way up to the roof, where a hovering UFO waits to pick her up. (Yes, I am just a little confused by the whole concept) While trying to escape to the roof, she is under constant attack by an army of creatures that include such minions as a pterodactyl that lays eggs, a big fat cat that just sits there, some octopuses, and a guy wearing all black with a rifle.

The timeline of this game is set over a course of the first part of her life. She start as an infant, and every time you clear a level she grows up just a little bit more. The levels cycle is as follows.

• Infant School
• Elementary School
• unior High School
• High School
• Studio

Infant Upskirts! What the hell!

Way to screw up your wedding ass.

You spend a good amount of time burning down schools in this game, and considering the man in black with the rifle, I wonder if this is where the angry parents of school shootings should aim their rage at. And if that isn’t bad enough, this title seems to also promote child pornography by featuring teens in their panties, and other such things such as infant upskirts.

To keep things confusing, after you burn down all of your schools and the music studio, you are treated with a level called “Chapel.” Here you get into a wedding dress and have to collect a few wedding artifacts like a ring, some flowers, and new shoes. As soon as you collect all the items, you head to the alter where some gimp in a tight white tuxedo comes dancing in. You give him a kiss, them he falls over and starts kicking wildly, and is probably a little more moist then he was a second ago. Then that is it. Game over. You get sent back to the Infant school level and get to do it again. This surprisingly weak game took me about 30 minutes to beat, and just to make sure that there wasn’t something special for beating it more then once, I went and played though again. Nothing changed. This game is now ranked number two on my most disappointing ending list. Number one belonging to American Gladiators. It is now ranked number one on my incoherent plot list.

Tony the Tiger gone awry.

No comment. It is just too horrible confusing.

Pickups: As if the whole plotline of this game wasn’t enough to make your brain grind to a halt, Jaleco threw in a few pickups to totally make you wonder just what the hell is in the sushi in Japan. One pickup is a little star that grants you invincibility for a while. That one is easy to digest. Another is a hieroglyphic bird that gives you a little dress to hid your shame. Its practical function is like armor, you can survive an extra hit when fully clothed.

Then comes the weird crap . . .

The first is this little bunny. When you pick it up a flying baby zooms in and hovers over your head. Then the baby starts raining down a nonstop storm of fireballs to incinerate anything that gets to close to you. Again, I don’t get it.

The second is, well I forgot what it looked like, but when you pick it up you transform into a huge deformed version of Tony the Tiger. Once you become the tiger, all of the enemies become fish that float around that you eat for bonus points. Actually, I think it would be more accurate to say “All sprites become floating fish that you eat for bonus points” because during one tiger rampage, this white tractor beam that is meant to haul you up onto the roof turned into a fish, and I ate it. Thus leaving me stranded on the level until I committed suicide. Anyways, what the hell does a mutant tiger have to do with a pyromaniac chick in her underwear? I’ll be damned if I ever riddle that one out.

The last pickup that blew my mind looks a bit like Pikachu. Once you grab it (Gotta’ collect ‘em all!) you get whisked away to a bonus level where you assault a bunch of flying bald heads!?!?This game is very confusing and disturbing at the same time.

Architecture: After playing this, I know now never to hire a Japanese architect. WTF is up with these buildings? Each floor just has these huge holes in the floor, often times right in front of the doors leading into other rooms. And why the hell does a pre-school need to be four stories tall with escalators in them? The damn kids will get caught in the steps. So much confusion, so little brain nodes to comprehend.

I did get a cool bonus modifyer.

Difficulty: I couldn’t imaging trying to beat this game using an actual console where I can’t save my state every five feet. This game is insanely hard to stay alive in. Partially due to the non stop enemy attacks that come at random so there is no way to memorize the level. It is also hard partially due to the jump controls. This is probably the first and only game in video game history that treats jumping like it is in real life. Where once you leave the ground, you have no control over your direction until you hit something solid again. This means that some jumps can get tricky enough to make Megaman jealous. To top it all off, there are *no* continues. You lose all your lives, you go right back to the beginning of the game. I can’t image the persistence it would take to play though this game on a console. Well, since it is Japanese however, and the Japanese do seem to be very persistent people. So I guess I can imagine someone actually beating this. Hell a few Japanese soldiers continued to fight World War II well into the 1970’s. That type of persistence would probably make this game a walk in the park.

The Final Verdict
I’m suing Jaleco for creating a product that made my WTF-o-Meter explode.