Alpha Mission is a 1985 SNK vertical shooter starring the ASO (Armored Scrum Object), a combat suit that can switch between flight mode and ground mode and defends itself with a rotating energy shield instead of the classic stacking power-up. It was one of SNK's first in-house titles before its golden era with the Neo Geo, and it laid the groundwork the studio would revisit in 1991 with Alpha Mission II.
It's a shooter with distinctive handling, somewhat slower and more tactical than its contemporaries, with that "first batch" design that's appreciated today more as a piece of SNK archaeology than as a top-tier playable reference.
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