The game was also released for the Atari Lynx handheld, which allowed up to 4 players, one of which at at a time could be a Snotterpillar.
Beating the game took something around 3 hours if you had friends, and didn't mind nearly losing your thumbs in the process. And of course, due to the backlit screen, you'd usually spend that entire time in the dark to get the full effect, so you might go half blind as well.
While the Lynx version did not allow for the same general Arcade experience, through allowing for one more player (the arcade only allowed for 3 players) and not involving quarters, one could have a nearly similarly joyful experience.
There were 3 teams of 4 individuals (1 to 3 players got 4 lives, 4 players got only about 3, depending on how fast they went through characters).
Each level was a space station that needed to be cleared. Each station might have any number of floors, from 1 to four. Pass keys needed to be acquired to enter specific rooms. There were also elevators and teleport pads to travel inside the station with.
There was a variety of guns, each with it's own peculiar benefits. There was a starting pellet gun, which wasn't extremely effective, a lazer gun, which would bounce off of third stage aliens, a rifle which would kill things rather quickly, and a smoke gun which was very powerful, but slow. There was also a fire extinguisher (for one of the 3 or 4 levels that was on fire), who's actual usefulness was debateable.
There was also a jetpack, for areas where the elevators had been destroyed.
Food could be acquired in various places to replace health.
The aliens came in five stages: Egg stage, larvae stage (which would crawl across the floor, and attach itself to a player, at which point they would be forced to jump around as much as possible to attempt to shake it loose, while their health dropped rapidly), 3rd stage, which crawled on the floor, or would turn into an armored ball which could not be shot (though it could be rolled in the opposite direction with shots occasionally), the snotterpillar, which was a huge, jumping alien which would really ruin your day, and the fifth stage aliens, which would hang in the doorways, and paralyze you if you looked in their eyes. There were also tentacles hanging from the ceiling which would grab you by the throat if you didn't kill them first.
Avoiding all of these things at once was as much trouble as killing any of them. Basically a cross between a jumping game and a mass shooting game.
The final boss was a huge green organic wall that was apparently the queen mother, surrounded by a ton of aliens in various stages, and throwing out eggs at random moments. The best strategy to beat her was to jump until one got behind her (where things tended not to be as much) and fire like crazy till she died, while your friends dealt with the chaos out in front.