Game of the Month May 2023: Alpha Mission II

From your review, I take it that you deem everything better than Captain Tomaday.

I like Alpha Mission II quite a lot. But coming to it for the first time in the 2000s my initial impressions were : it looked a bit basic (mainly the first level) and was clunky. Once I got into though I enjoyed it and I could see SNK had put a lot of thought into the game. 

The Armor power-up system is over-complicated for an arcade game. Takes too much time to figure it out. You have to collect 3 pieces of the same Armor until you can add it to your ship. And it's very easy to miss parts or to collect the wrong pieces (which means you lose all pieces of your current Armor and have to start on a new one)

BUT once you figure that out it makes the game a lot more fun. e.g having the flame Armor on the huge spaceship on the 2nd level really makes it easy to destroy all the turrets quickly

A pretty good game but a little clunky (not that fluid feeling) by today's standards.

I really like the final boss in this game :

I recently speedran this www.twitch.tv/videos/1814415957 (along with Captain Tomaday; I liked them both). Alpha Mission II is fun but slow-paced. I dig the graphics and the various powerups. I am uploading the vid to my YouTube now.