Allia Quest - Atari 2600

"Allia Quest" is a highly addictive vertical shooter. It has solid graphics and sound.

This game takes time and patience to get use to the different varieties of alien ships and the formation and movement patterns of each. I have my own name of each of them, based on how they look, such as Eyeballs, Flying Carpets, Klingon Battle Cruisers, Lanterns, etc. The game has different names for them of course.

Each enemy formation must be destroyed completely before the next formation of enemies will appear. Remember, each enemy has its own pattern as far as how it moves in formation. But the formation an enemy uses will stay the same from one level to the next. Once you have destroyed the last ship in the last formation you will hear a bleep tone. That not only indicates that you are moving on to the next level, but have also earned an extra ship. You have to keep track of how many ships you have in your head, because it's not displayed.

An interesting feature of this game is that if you move to the left or right of center far enough you will see another formation mirroring the one in the center. They can take you out as well, but then you can destroy them as well. As you advance each level these 'mirror' formations will move closer to the one in the center, forcing you to thread the needle so to speak.

This is a very good game considering that it's only 4k in size. Actually, this is a good game. Period.

STRATEGY:
After you learn the formation patterns (the way the ships move), you must learn the art of 'the dance.' You must weave as they weave, learning their rhythms as you go. I generally let the first wave go, so that I can get a clean shot of their under-bellies as they appear from the top of the screen. I will only shoot 4 in one pass. 5 is pushing it.

CONTROLLER OF CHOICE: Sega Genesis 3-button game pad. Not only is it more responsive than the standard 2600 Joystick, but it's much more comfortable during long sessions.

I am the current World Record holder for this game at High Score:
Both Difficulty Switches set for b: 52,000
Both Difficulty Switches set for A: 56,000

Very solid game, tough and addicting. If you like vertical shooters check this one out.

Until recently, I'd never heard of Allia Quest. I stumbled onto some positive comments about Allia Quest so I decided to checked it out.

Wow - I'd never heard of it before, but it's a really decent pattern shmup. Especially when you consider that this game dates from 2001, it is a very impressive homebrew. Honestly I think the name is part of the problem. When I see the name Allia Quest, I think it might be some sort of sword-swinging RPG type game, but this is very much an old school "death from above" space shooter. The game play is interesting, and the graphics are actually quite good for the old VCS.

This game is more than meets the eye. When the first formation of aliens game came at me, I thought "oh, brother. What kind of kiddie shit is THIS?"

Wrong. Next thing I knew, I looked up and TWO HOURS had gone by. What?

I highly recommend this game. It's hard as hell and the variety of alien graphics is great. As Ethan said above, not the greatest game, but a great game nonetheless!

Allia Quest is an excellent vertical shooter featuring large, colorful graphics that would be right at home in the classic arcade game Astro Blaster. The graphics in this game are absolutely superb, including a multi-level star field which gives a very nice sense of depth and movement, and the most impressive title screen I\'ve seen on any 2600 game. The gameplay isn\'t anything new - you just shoot everything that attacks you and try not to get hit. But it is well executed, and the game is fun and challenging with good replay value. On the downside, there\'s no indication of how many lives (shields) you have left, and you can\'t use the fire button to restart after losing a game. Both of these are pretty obvious omissions, but don\'t detract too much from it being a good game. An additional element - such as needing to refuel periodically (as in Astro Blaster) would have been a nice touch, but even as it stands, Allia Quest is definitely recommended.