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NES box art for Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum, the cover of NEStalgia episode 271

271 · Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum

▶ Game info
VerdictSkip it
SeasonSeason 6
DeveloperBeam Software
PublisherData East
May 5, 2023 · 32 min · transcript available

You are Dash Galaxy, a fearless space explorer. You have just landed on a strange, alien planet thousands of light years from Earth. Your mission is to make your way though the maze of rooms and return safely to your ship. To do this you will need to enter every room and collect all of the objects that can be found in it. Your oxygen supply is limited, though, so be sure to hurry!

Our verdict: Skip it

Beam Software made this for Data East in 1990. It alternates between overhead block-pushing rooms and side-scrolling platforming. Mike and Sean played it without Joe, who we joked had checked himself into the mental ward of the universe. The ideas are a little unusual, but the game is boring and Dash is a pain to control.

How it plays

  • Block puzzles. Overhead rooms like Zelda, where you push blocks to reveal entrances into the platforming sections. You can soft lock yourself. Pushing blocks is fine in principle, since Chip's Challenge is mostly that.
  • Switches. Turn off every switch to complete a room. We took them for light switches, so powering the place down unlocks the door. A terrible design decision.
  • Oxygen is your health. Hits drain it, and every new room refills it, so leaving solves the problem. Our canon guess is airlocks and a belt oxygen pack.
  • Bombs. You start with none and they vanish fast. Health is generous, so think of yourself as the most impressive man in the universe who just doesn't kill.

What doesn't

  • Moving Dash. Hold the D-pad about a second and a half and he switches from walking to running on his own. Running gives a long jump, standing gives a high one, and stopping takes time. It has Mario's slipperiness without the feel, and it makes jumping fickle.
  • Rooms not built for him. Prince of Persia designs its gaps and traps around how its character moves. Here every platform seems to slow you down, and the trampolines feel like a band-aid.
  • Mystery items. Ten stars give you invincibility, which makes Dash ten times weaker than Mario. We grabbed everything without knowing what it did, because it was just there.

Worth knowing

  • The box art. The face looks like Mega Man before he turned 50. The Dash in the game wears a blue Star Trek suit. Art seems to have gotten a memo that said "a man surrounded by the game's enemies."
  • A franchise that isn't. The 1950s sci-fi box and cartoon intro suggest a bigger series. It is one NES game, never ported, with no sequels. It feels like a PC game, and we could believe it started on the Apple II.

The bottom line

Skip it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. Mike called it not so much incoherent as really boring, and with the controls there was nothing compelling. He wanted the game the box art promised, like buying Metal Slug at a thrift store and finding FIFA inside. Sean called it underdeveloped, though its ideas are more unusual than most games we don't love.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

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