The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - Last Alert (a.k.a. Red Alert)
This absolutely bonkers overhead action game is like Metal Gear Solid meets Rambo if both were based on a cheesy anime.
RELEASE DATE: 1989
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Shin-Nihon Laser Soft / Telenet
BEST VERSIONS: TurboGrafx CD
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Fairly playable
I’ve never been a big fan of Data East’s 1988 overhead run and gun shooter Bloody Wolf, but it at least makes me chuckle because it’s the sort of game where you shoot an endless cavalcade of bad guys who have a single death animation that results in them clutching their bloody chest with one hand and reaching vainly up into the sky with their other one like they’re hammy background actors in a terrible war movie. It’s also the sort of game where you play as a one-man army who’s not just capable of taking down elite soldiers in bulletproof armor wielding machineguns and flamethrowers, but also helicopters, tanks, boats and submarines.
Now if you take all of that and add in a rudimentary inventory and leveling system, cool set piece boss battles, pulse-pumping soundtrack, colorful 1980s-style anime cutscenes and some of the most hilariously awful English dubbing ever recorded for an otherwise good game, you’ll get Last Alert, the North American version of the Japanese game Red Alert for the TurboGrafx CD.
While it’s tempting to play this game ironically just to experience the amazingly ridiculous story and hear some of the cringiest dialogue in all of video gaming, I actually found it to be a surprisingly good time. If this game were released today, it’d almost be misclassified with more obviously parodic games like Saint’s Row, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Double Dragon Neon and Metal Wolf Chaos because it’s so over the top and silly that it almost seems like it’s a send-up of 1980s shooters. But it’s not a love letter to the genre – it’s rather one of the peaks of it released just before arcade run and gun overhead shooters gave way to more sophisticated experiences.
I don’t just like Last Alert – I love this game, both because it’s a fun and accessible shooter and because it’s so over-the-top that it always paints a goofy grin on my face. This is the sort of game where nearly every enemy goes down with a single, bloody shot, where the bosses taunt you with ridiculous dialogue before attacking you, where you rank up from “Ranger” to “Sharp Shooter” to “Sniper” and then all the way up to titles like “Fullarmor Guy,” “Oneman Army” and “Mad Thunder” before you achieve the ultimate designation of “Super Hero.” It’s the sort of game where your already formidable early weapons get upgraded with an unlimited supply of spread shots and missiles and where you can pick up a nice array of secondary items like grenades, homing missiles, satellite drones, bouncing blades or a flamethrower to rain destruction down on the screen. It’s like playing the ultimate evolution of SNK’s Ikari Warriors or Capcom’s Commando without all the cheap deaths and endless vertically scrolling stages.
Last Alert takes place over a series of scenarios based around the adventures of Guy Kazama, a one-man army who looks like Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star but behaves like the over-the-top John Rambo from the First Blood sequels. Guy’s mission is generally to infiltrate enemy bases and wreak havoc, but there are some nice variations to keep things from getting stale. While most of the game involves running around linear levels (which thankfully shift directions from time to time rather than simply moving towards the top of the screen) and shooting everyone in sight, there are several open-exploration levels where you plant bombs or rescue hostages, and there are even a few where you get to be a spy, trying to keep a low profile and taking out troops more cautiously. There are even some places where you get to select which mission you go on, giving you additional chances to level up before you take on a major boss.
Speaking of villains, Last Alert is filled with them, starting with the four evil master criminals who’ve banded together in a group called the Force Project. Those who’ve played the Metal Gear franchise will enjoy this rogue’s gallery since each is inspired by a different sort of action movie villain – you have the South African warlord whose nickname is “Mad Dog,” the corrupt politician who kidnaps the president, the Chinese head of a criminal organization clearly modeled after the bad guy from the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon and the monocle-wearing, cybernetic arm-sporting, pointy eared bad guy who seems to have a base on the moon. This last villain, Dr. Che Garcia, is particularly fun because he gives a monologue before the final set of missions announcing his evil plan, telling the heroes how to stop him and daring Guy Kazama to try.
But where there are villains, there are distinctive evil henchmen, each of whom awaits you at the end of each stage and who offers a voiced exchange with Guy before the battle begins (except for a couple of moments which were censored in the North American version). While many of these henchmen utilize weapons similar to what you can carry, some have distinctive attacks that allow them to move quickly around the screen, and most require some strategy and careful maneuvering to defeat. Not every boss is human, either – some are made up of automated defense systems, and one, found near the end of the game, appears to be a Chinese dragon living in the sewers of Dr. Garcia’s base. Throughout the levels, there’s less variety of enemies beyond the thousands of soldiers you’ll murder, but you’ll occasionally run across a stage where you’re battling vehicles, mine cars, women armed with fans, or elite guards who fire missiles, grenades or blades. Later in the game, you’ll also face mechanical traps that are often flanked by tough gauntlets of enemies.
Last Alert is beatable within a few hours and offers a generous life bar with lots of power-ups and health items as well as unlimited continues, but it’s made slightly more challenging by a couple of things. First, the game will spawn an infinite number of enemies at you but also has a time limit, which means you can’t and shouldn’t try to kill everyone who comes towards you since you’ll never finish each stage in time. Second, the controls take some getting used to since you can shoot in eight directions, but also lock yourself into a strafe by holding down the fire button. In the early stages where you have a handgun as your primary weapon, it can be very difficult to hit enemies precisely with the limited rate of fire, and it’s easier just to run and shoot anyone in your way. Once you get the spread shot weapon, however, the game gets substantially easier for awhile because you can spray and pray either from a strafing position as you move forward or by rotating around and shooting every which way.
I actually think Last Alert’s action is good enough to make the game stand on its own merits, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t provide a little more detail on the amazingly terrible English script and accompanying voice acting. Those who remember the early days of CD-ROM gaming probably recall that professional voice actors were rarely used in production and that it wasn’t uncommon to have programmers and their family members provide voices instead. (In North America, at least – the Japanese version was voiced by a stable of professional anime voice actors.) The initial boss battle is quite well-known for an exchange where a voice actor decides to make a hostage’s voice sound like something you’d hear come from a character on Sesame Street, but even good actors struggle to make convincing dialogue out of lines like “Guy Kazama, you’d better watch what you say to me… I’m really quick on the trigger!”, but when an amateur voice actor decides to deliver that in a pleasant, sing-song voice, it’s really hard not to laugh. Some other wonderful lines include:
“Hey Guy! Let my baby Betty blow you a kiss!” to which Guy responds, “You’re some weirdo, naming your helicopter…”
“Hey, you, fatso! You’re blocking the traffic!” to which the villain responds, in a poor attempt at a Cajun accent, “Kee hee, Guy, I’m gunna destroy you.”
“Sorry, but ‘ladies first’ doesn’t apply on a battlefield.”
After a villain complains about how much money Guy has cost him, Guy responds, mispronouncing an important word, “People will hate you, Steve, if you’re too sting-y”
“You’re the infiltrator? I haven’t had a visitor in a long time!” to which Guy responds, “I don’t need your hospitality. Just let me pass. I’m in a kind of a hurry.”
In a fight with Dr. Garcia, the villain asks, “Why would a hireling soldier like you run such a risk to torment me like this? Why?” to which Guy responds, “Garcia, nobody can hire my feelings.”
It’s all pretty great, particularly since the same two people performed a lot of the voices and you sometimes wonder if they weren’t sure which character they were voicing.
On the other hand, the graphics and cutscenes for Last Alert are pretty impressive for a console game from 1989 and reflect some really strong production values. The animations are smooth and never seem to have the pop-in or flickering you see so often on console overhead shooters of the era and the icon-based inventory menu is very easy to navigate and understand. The character designs are high-quality and feel like they could be based on an actual anime or manga series, and while many assets are re-used throughout the game, the levels are nicely detailed with plenty of variety to help sell the idea that you’re traveling around the world. Little touches, like villagers peaking out of their huts to see what’s happening outside or goofy little snowmen appearing amidst the snow on the alpine levels, really add some visual flair.
As good as Last Alert is, there’s little mystery as to why it’s so obscure today. The TurboGrafx-16 performed poorly as a console in North America, but the TurboGrafxCD add-on was both expensive and undesirable when it first debuted, a matter made worse by the fact that there were few games for it and they were almost all heavily Japanese in design and aesthetic during a time where Western audiences weren’t too interested in anime or manga. That Last Alert also played like a Rambo knock-off when there were several good Rambo games already available for consoles only further hurt its chances.
If you want to play Last Alert today, you’ll either need the appropriate hardware and a copy of the game (which will set you back at least $150 for the game alone) or you’ll need to find an ISO image and play it through an emulator. Sadly, emulation is probably your best bet for enjoying this game; the original publisher, Telenet Japan, changed hands many times and is currently owned by SunSoft, which has done next to nothing to preserve games from Laser Soft or any of Telenet’s other development teams. It doesn’t look like Konami has any plans to release a second TurboGrafx-16 mini console or games library for modern consoles.
If you can get your hands on Last Alert, however, I can assure you that you will be highly entertained, and if there’s ever a re-release on a remake, you can bet I’ll be picking it up to support the rediscovery of this wonderfully cheesy shooter.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!
Everything about this screams 'MUST PLAY' in an over-the-top 80s fashion