Aliens Go Home Run Review

Back in 1976, Atari created Breakout. As an expansion of the "bounce a ball with a bat" concept created in their debut title Pong, this was a pretty big deal. The game was an instant success, swallowing more quarters and shillings than the average sofa cushion. It also spawned hundreds of clones, with tonnes of developers wanting a piece of the brick-breaking proverbial pie. In 2017, we have Aliens Go Home Run as the latest clone.

The game is the work of US-based development trio Anim.Ace and started life as a GameBoy title, created as part of a game jam. This should give you a good idea of what to expect here; Aliens Go Home Run is a very retro title. The version that has come to Steam is a lot more polished than the hastily created game jam title, looking more like something you would expect to see in an arcade cabinet around 1992 or maybe on the Amiga if you had a beefed-up unit.

The story is as ludicrous as you expect from an arcade title. In it, we see our hero Sally playing baseball and accidentally hitting the ball so hard that she blows up part of an alien planet, causing an intergalactic war. Seeing as she's the cause of it, Sally is apparently the only person who can stop it. To do so, she must use her trusty baseball bat to hit balls that will destroy the coloured blocks that are appear with the aliens, because videogames.

The aliens themselves can be destroyed by hitting them with your baseball, but they will respawn after a few seconds, only being permanently destroyed when all of the bricks are gone. Unlike most games of this type, you can adjust the angle of the ball by holding an analogue stick down when hitting it, making the game a little less random than other Breakout clones. You can also allow the ball to land without penalty, which is often necessary as the aliens will regularly fire waves of bullets at you, giving the game an element of bullet-hell shooter.

Like all the best arcade games, the controls are super simple. Left stick controls your character, then you have a button to swing your bat, one to use a power up and one to slide. The sliding is key to the whole game, it soaks up enemy bullets and it also stops the ball in its tracks. If you want any kind of accuracy, then you'll need to perfect your sliding technique. That said, it's often a dangerous game to take too much time lining up your shots due to the aforementioned aerial attacks.

The power up system is progressive. The drops are all identical and the power granted gets stronger with each one you collect. You can choose to either activate it right away for a minor boost, or save it to get yourself a major one. It gives an extra element of tactics to the game, adding to an established formula without making it too complex.

Overall, this is a game that really captures the feel of those old-school titles that it is so clearly inspired by. It’s an original use of an existing concept that’s easy to learn but difficult to master. If this was a real arcade title, I’d probably have spent about a month’s worth of pocket money on it by now.