and vary depending on the character chosen at the start of the game. For instance, Garth summons a U.S. Air Force starship that drops bombs across the street (in the Master System version he has Karen's special, a ballistic missile strike). Scooter will teleport out of his present location and leave a series of bombs that will blow up on the appearance of aliens, after which he will re-appear (in the Mega Drive and arcade versions he just explodes, leaving his head, which his new body returns to retrieve). Karen calls down a nuclear missile, which incinerates every foe on the screen. However, a large amount of energy is depleted by using each character's special attack, and cannot be used if the energy of the player's character is too low. There are few bosses in the game. The arcade original features an alien spaceship, an alien brain and a single boss in the middle of the game that has three distinct forms. This boss is repeated as a common enemy near the end of the last mission. The Mega Drive port has two of these forms as three separate bosses. At the end of each mission, the side-scrolling gameplay shifts to either a shooting gallery perspective where the player must take out the aliens that pop out of various locations, similar to the bonus stages of Shinobi and Shadow Dancer, both by Sega, or a running section that is similar to the side-scrolling mode but plays like a horizontal shooter instead with projectile weapons. Release In October 1993, Atari Corporation filed a lawsuit against Sega for an alleged infringement of a patent originally created by Atari Corp. in the 1980s, with the former seeking a preliminary injunction to stop manufacturing, usage and sales of hardware and software for both Sega Genesis and Game Gear. On September 28, 1994, both parties reached a settlement in which it involved a cross-licensing agreement to publish up to five titles each year across their systems until 2001. The Master System version of Alien Storm was one of the first five titles approved from the deal by Sega in order to be converted for the Atari Jaguar, but it was never released. Reception In Japan, Game Machine listed Alien Storm on their June 15, 1990 issue as being the most-successful table arcade unit of the month. Megatech reviewed the Sega Genesis version and gave an