Super Aleste (スーパーアレスタ), known in North America as Space Megaforce, is a vertical-scrolling shooter video game, published by Toho and part of the Aleste series by Compile. In a traditional fashion, the player pilots a space ship through a variety of locales crawling with enemy squadrons to shoot down, though the story in the Japanese version is different from American and European ones. However, Super Aleste also offers a "Short Game", where only a set of small levels are played, with the emphasis on scoring as many points as possible.

There are eight types of weapons to use, and each can be powered up by collecting chips (small spherical items). Picking up chips causes the player's current weapon to level-up, to a maximum of six. There are two types of chips to find; Orange chips contribute to a level-up, but at higher levels, more chips are required to reach the next level. Green chips make the weapon level up instantly. Each weapon has a function that can be manipulated with the Shot-Control button, changing around the weapon's abilities to suit different situations. Switching to another weapon is done by picking up a numbered item, with initials representing one of the eight weapons. The types are:

• Multiple Shot: standard bullets, which can be set to fire in different patterns.
• Laser: lightning gun, which can fire homing bolts or swiveling streams.
• Multi-Direction Shot: plasma balls which are aimed by pressing the control pad before holding Fire, and can be controlled to either aim freely, or strafe.
• Missile: shoot strong straight-firing missiles, or slightly less powerful homing missiles.
• Circle: small Multiple Shot, and spheres orbit the player, rapidly damaging whatever they hit, and can be set to stop moving.
• Power Shot: small Multiple Shot, hold Fire to charge up energy, and release to fire a continuous beam, can be set to charge quicker with no Multiple Shot.
• Scatter: shoot bombs that split into bullets upon impact, can be set to fire at an angle based on horizontal movement.
• Sprite: small ships follow the player, all able to shoot one stream of bullets each, can be set to lock positions.

In standard shooter fashion, the player is allotted a supply of smart bombs. Unlike in most games, these bombs don't render the player invincible, although they do block most enemy projectiles. Upon releasing a bomb, it creates an expanding ring of explosions that spread out, then converge.