Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum (NES) Playthrough
147A playthrough of Data East's 1990 platformer for the NES, Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum.
Dash Galaxy is an explorer who has found himself stranded on an alien world far from Earth. Trapped aboard a rocket, the titular "Alien Asylum," he'll have to fight his way across twenty-four floors if he has any hope of escaping and making it back to his own ship.
The path through the alien ship is a sprawling maze, and the game is split into two primary play modes. The first, a Sokoban-like puzzle mode, functions as the overworld. In this mode, Dash has to push boxes around in order to clear the path between doors. Several of the obstacles he'll face in these areas can only be overcome with keys and bombs, and Dash has to search for these items in the "rocket rooms" that dot each area.
The rocket rooms play host to platforming sections that make up the game's second play mode. In these areas, Dash has to avoid enemies and gather supplies, including keys (to disable the forcefields), bombs (to clear blocks), oxygen refills, and all of the blue remotes have to be collected to unlock the exit.
There are fewer bombs and keys to be found than there are obstacles to be cleared, and since it's entirely possible to run out and find yourself completely stuck in a dead end, the maze becomes a jigsaw puzzle. Making it the end requires memorizing which rooms hold the items you need and planning a route that uses them as efficiently as possible. (If you try to play every stage, you'll find yourself in a no-win situation by the time you've cleared the six floor. In this video, I went as far as I could while being thorough, but the game eventually forced me to warp ahead to make any further progress.)
The gameplay is similar to another of Beam's games, Back to the Future Part II & III (https://youtu.be/Q3LtrThw8Y8), and as was the case with that game, Dash Galaxy's structure undermines any fun that might've otherwise been found in the game. Sure, the action scenes are way too easy, the stiff controls make playing through them a chore, and the maze sections are agonizingly tedious and slow, but it's the endless repetition that stems from the trial-and-error nature of the game's structure and the forced resets from hitting dead ends that truly buries Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum.
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