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It seems there are a lot of side-scrolling beat-'em-ups on the Genesis that are modeled after Streets of Rage. One of them is Alien Storm, a brawler that replaces the endless waves of thugs with endless waves of aliens. Although the three available characters carry guns, rocket launchers, and flame throwers, these weapons are only of use if you're up close and personal to your enemies, since the game plays exactly like Streets of Rage. Characters have screen-clearing special moves here, too. There are a few portions of the game where you fight enemies in a first-person, shooting gallery setup, tearing up aliens and the scenery and finding energy canisters for your weapons and your special attacks.

Alien Storm is a boring knock-off of Streets of Rage and it does little to hide it. If it was possible to use your arsenal of weapons to actually shoot aliens from across the screen rather than being forced to battle with them up close, this might have been an unusual enough game experience to warrant a recommendation. The crushing blow is that you never seem to get enough energy to make special attacks worth using, especially because you can't fire your guns once you're out of it. First they give us weapons that don't act like you would expect them to, and then they expect us to conserve weapon energy when the point of beat-'em-ups is to get in as many punches as possible? That doesn't sound like a well-thought out game to me.