Game:

Tomcat Alley (1994)

Duration: 13:37

401 views

0

The Sega CD version of Tomcat Alley is developed by "The Code Monkeys" and published by Sega, and is one of several FMV (full motion video) games released on the system released under the "TruVideo" banner. The game deals with Dakota (your pilot teammate) and Shadow 5 (you, a Radar Intercept Officer), two hotshots working with a team of other pilots to hunt down a Russian colonel, Alexi Povich, who is seeking to become a new world military power (and armed with loads of weapons and supporters for you to stop), and you'll stop him by flying heavily armed F-14X Tomcat fighters. As far as FMV games go, it's one of the better games of its kind on the system simply for it's relatively smooth gameplay and more engaging design, where the game has many variables and mostly random level mechanics, so you can't simply play the levels using memorization like many titles within the FMV game genre. In addition, you have several commands you can use such as to shoot regular missiles, long range missiles, dodging, communicating to others via radio, and select waypoints which may determine the difficulty of following stage segments. It should be noted that you don't do any of the flying, just take care of the action bits.

The game is unbelievably cheesy, like many Sega CD FMV titles, but is one of the few to have full-screen video, especially throughout all phases of the game. The video quality isn't very good, but is "just" decent enough where you can distinguish enemy threats and have a good view of the action (also thanks to targets to highlight enemies), which is what is most important. The audio isn't is good as some Sega CD games, but is tolerable. The game is quite challenging by default, but you can adjust the difficulty in the options to make the game harder. You also have the ability to save your progress. This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.