Overview
Mad Alien was produced by Data East in 1980.
Mad Alien is a vertical shoot-em-up in the style of Space Invaders , where you play the police chasing alien motorcyclists through the city. Each level has two parts. In the first, you shoot at a formation or pattern of aliens, where occasionally, a particularly mad alien will break formation and turn back to shoot at you (ala Galaxian ). Once most of the formation has been shot, a car will appear. Shooting that car will start the next part, where erratically driving groups of two cars and two motorcycles are overtaken, and must be shot or avoided. After enough cars have been avoided, the next pattern starts.
Collision with an alien, one of its shots, or cars will lose one of your three lives. Although you have a gun, it is limited in that only one bullet can be on the screen at the same time. Sometimes, the chase enters a tunnel, where you can only see cars and any bikes within the range of your headlights. The car can only move left and right along the bottom of the screen.
The very similar game Hwy Chase was released for arcade machines fitted with the Data East Cassette system.
