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Marsmare Alienation is a pure action title, with a traditional flavour starting from the plot, narrated by a nice animated introduction. On a quiet July night, the inhabitant of a house in the middle of a forest is kidnapped by some evil extra-terrestrials and taken to their base on Mars. It is easy to imagine that your aim will be to get the poor soul back home, facing the alien hordes.

The game is a classic platform/shooter: first you must get hold of a laser gun, not only to take down the enemies, but also to disable the numerous force fields barring the sections of the base, by shooting their generators. The gun has only 16 rounds, but luckily there is no shortage of ammunition to find. Along the way you will then have to find 20 crystals and 25 units of fuel needed to start a UFO placed on the surface of the planet, necessary in order to return to Earth. The last section takes place outside the base, so you will also need a spacesuit equipped with a jetpack before exiting from there. By pressing the "M" key, a window with a map showing the already visited areas will appear on the screen - very useful for finding your way through the base. There are also several checkpoints to activate; when the main character loses all his energy, the game restarts from the last one reached.

Technically speaking, Marsmare Alienation is first class; it is a pleasure to see and hear. The playing area takes up almost the entire size of the screen, backdrops are colourful and well drawn, but not cluttered with details, so as to avoid sprites getting confused with them. Sprites, in turn, move rapidly - the main character, in particular, walks maybe a little too fast - and smoothly. The AY soundtrack is pleasant and underlines the unfolding of the game action adequately.

On the other hand, Marsmare Alienation reminds of a large number of already seen titles, from Dan Dare onwards. Gameplay is based on a well-known and tested formula, without touches of particular originality. The fact that in order to proceed we must find and destroy the generators, as well as the part where the main character moves in the spacesuit, makes the game less linear, but not that much.

Ultimately, it's an "old tale", albeit very well told.