A 4-part survey of the Alien franchise in computer, video and pinball games (amongst other things…)
Link to Part 2 Link to Part 3 Link to Part 4
At the end of 2014, SEGA released perhaps the definitive videogame adaptation of 20th Century Fox’s Alien film franchise, the BAFTA award-winning Alien: Isolation. They took the story right back to its roots, setting the game in the 57-year gap between the end of Ridley Scott’s 1979 original and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel.
In the almost five-year period since then, we’ve had another film, a digital pinball game, a VR ‘experience’, an actual VR game, an arcade machine, and a ‘game’ for Amazon’s Alexa. This year will already see the release of a brand new Android/iOS game, and we’ll also apparently be getting a new first-person shooter for PC and consoles. There have also been numerous new comics and short stories published. Well, that’s quite a lot of new material to have bubbled up to the surface of the pop-culture pond, and you may be wondering why, given that the two prequel films, Alien: Covenant (2017) and its controversial predecessor, Prometheus (2012), were not completely well received by audiences and critics. The answer might have something to do with the added power of media consumed interactively as opposed to passively, but that’s all for another day. What we’re going to do here, and for the next couple of weeks, is have a look back at the long, strange history of the Alien franchise in interactive entertainment — it turns out that H.R. Giger’s creation has been scaring our monitors for 37 years. Thirty-seven years!
Before we get rolling on this long, weird train, a caveat. In its 3 decades-plus of gaming history, the Alien has appeared on many different formats, from Game Boys to arcade machines. To keep this from turning into more of a sprawling mess than it already is, we’re going to be focusing on the home computer and console games, including the popular cross-over concept of the Alien vs Predator series of films and games. The dozens of mobile, handheld and arcade games will, however, all still get small mentions, for the sake of continuity. We also need to look at some of the history surrounding the films and other spin-off media, so you can expect a little of that too. Also, and as always, I’ve tried my best to credit picture sources accurately, but if you feel a correction is necessary (or you’re a rights holder and would rather your image were not used), then please do comment down below and I will attend to it a.s.a.p.
Now then, with all that said, steel yourselves for a range of horrors, from the Alien itself to a number of less than salubrious titles…
[Image Credits: 20th Century Fox/H. R. Giger]
First, the basics. The alien we know and love today began as a print entitled Necronomicon IV in Swiss surrealist artist Hans Rudolf Giger’s 1976 book, Necromnomicon, and arrived on the cinema screen in 1979, in Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusset’s Ridley Scott-directed Alien. O’Bannon had previously worked on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (later the basis for David Lynch’s 1984 version), on which production Giger had also been employed as a concept artist. When it came to deciding what Alien’s creature would look like, O’Bannon showed Scott a copy of Necronomicon, from which Scott was most inspired by the aforementioned Necronomicon IV. Giger was then hired to develop it into something usable for the production, and legendary Italian effects artist Carlo Rambaldi took his designs and created the now-legendary mechanical head and suit. These were worn by 2.8m-tall Nigerian student Bolaji Badejo for most of the shoot, with minor exceptions for stunt work provided by veteran stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell.
[Image Credit: Fox Video Games/Atari Interactive]
More or less concurrently, Atari was working on its premier games console, the Atari VCS, which it released for sale in 1977. Three years after the film’s release, in 1982, 20th Century Fox’s electronic media arm Fox Video Games (known as Fox Interactive since 1994), was busy capitalising on the home console boom, publishing and developing a wide variety of games for the Atari (by then rebranded the Atari 2600, after its stock number CX2600). Some of these were based on its own recent film catalogue, including M*A*S*H, Porky’s, Star Wars, and of course, Alien — the first ever Alien game.
In the heady days of the Second Generation of home consoles and their blocky, abstract graphics and simple, limited gameplay, most titles lived or died on two things: their box art, and their concept. In that first Alien game the concept was ‘be chased by the Alien but don’t get caught’, the absolute master of which had been, for the last two years, Pac Man. This perhaps explains why… why everything, really. Your task was to run around the USS Nostromo (Pac Man maze), crushing Alien eggs underfoot (Pac Man pellets), and avoiding the Aliens (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde). Unfortunately there were no Power Pills, but you did get a rather handy flamethrower. In all, it was perhaps not the most auspicious start to Alien gaming history, but it was appropriate for its time and a boxed copy, in good condition, can now fetch the staggering sum of around USD 40.
[Image Credit: Amsoft/Concept Software Ltd./Argus Press Software Ltd.]
While it may have taken a few years to get the ball rolling, 1984 saw a much better attempt at an Alien game, this time from the British trio of Amsoft (an Amstrad subsidiary), Concept Software Ltd. and publishers Argus Press Software Ltd. Initially released for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, with the Amstrad CPC following in 1985, the second Alien game ever was a turn-based explore-’em-up that made a good job of capturing some of the tension and atmosphere of the film. The 8-bit home computers were NASA-like powerhouses compared to the Atari’s MOS 6507 CPU, which certainly helped them produce a more interesting, tactical experience that did create some genuine tension. Even their limited palettes and clunky fonts served to help recapture some of the legendary ‘future retro’ look of the film. I had the game for my Commodore 64, and one thing I particularly remember is the very large, plastic case it came in, as well as a very nice fold-out poster. This was a job well done, and fans and critics alike were not displeased.
It’s just as well too, because that would be the last game based anywhere near the original film until 30 years later when we were blessed with 2014’s Alien: Isolation. Its creators, The Creative Assembly, were absolutely right to vaunt it as a long overdue return to the franchise’s ‘one alien, one horror’ roots. For in 1986, just two years after the Argus Press Alien, James Cameron unleashed his riveting sequel, which with its explosive combination of macho militarism and not one, but hundreds of Aliens, became the blueprint for the entire Alien franchise for the next three decades. Nearly every comic, novel, toy, game and cartoon (yes, cartoon) was clearly stamped with marines, pulse rifles, killer androids (again), Alien queens and gun-toting pseudo-Ripleys (ironic given Sigourney Weaver’s intense dislike of guns and gun culture). Arguably, Aliens IS the Alien franchise, or at least has been for the last few decades, and whilst that may be depressing creatively, it’s certainly no mean feat. It makes sense then that the next dozen-plus games we’re going to be looking at all stem from that one, pluralised source. Let’s begin, again.
My 13-year-old mind boggled at these amazing, film-like graphics…
[Image Credit: Mr. Micro Ltd./Activision, Inc.]
It’s generally reckoned that Star Wars was the catalyst for the decades of genre cinema we’ve been experiencing ever since. In its wake, Hollywood raced to put spaceships, monsters, psychopaths and superheroes on the big screen. This is part of the reason why the 1980s are remembered as being packed full of the brilliant and terrible films that spawned today’s franchise-obsessed, genre-mad pop culture. And concurrently with the genre film boom of the 1980s, the videogame business was also taking off — despite the great North American Video Game Crash of 1983 that saw the fledgling console industry fall into a two-year recession. But this only helped the Commodore 64 cement its position in the US and Canada as a home computer, and with Commodore already strong in Britain and Europe, it was 8-bit home computer sales (and from the mid-1980s onwards, the Nintendo Entertainment System) that began to drive the games industry back up again.
(As an aside, this highlights the problem I have with using the term ‘videogames’ as a generic phrase to describe both console gaming and PC/home computer gaming — historically, they have always been two separate things, even if the inevitable convergence brought about by the Internet has slowly glued them together, like a facehugger to its hapless victim).
Too young to see the film; old enough to play the game. Ha!
[Image Credit: Electric Dreams Software/Software Studios]
Part of that rebuilding process was built off the back of movie tie-ins, something that we take for granted today in many forms of media, though strangely not so much in games any more. Commodores, Spectrums and Amstrads in the UK and Europe, Ataris, MSXs and Commodores in North America, and Apple IIs and NESs everywhere, were all absolutely swimming in film and TV tie-ins, a practise which carried on non-stop through the 16-bit era and has only seemed to die down in the last decade and a half. Ask any Spectrum or Atari ST owner about their favourite games of the time, and they’re bound to mention at least a few film tie-ins. Aliens (thanks for bearing with me) was no exception, receiving not one, but two home computer adaptations. The first, Aliens: The Computer Game, was released to Commodore 64s and ZX Spectrums in 1986 and Amstrad CPCs and the Apple IIe in 1987, and was a joint effort by Mr. Micro and Activation (in its original, pre-Kotick, 1979–1991 incarnation). This was a pretty good fun collection of mini games that followed the story of the film, beginning with you piloting the dropship through an atmosphere full of Pilot Wings-style hoops in an echo of the HUD ‘tunnel’ that Ferro flies through in the film. It then progressed through the various different scenes of the film, including a multi-monitor ‘guide the marines through the atmosphere processor’ bit, and a side-scrolling shooter bit as Ripley runs through the corridors of Hadley’s Hope rescuing them afterwards. Each part was punctuated by colourful, full-screen cutscenes (if you can imagine a largely static screen with speech bubbles being a cutscene), and a small eternity of anticipation as it loaded in from the tape.
[Image Credit: Software Studios/Electric Dreams Software/Ricochet]
The second of the two original Aliens games was brilliantly also called Aliens: The Computer Game, despite hailing from a totally different developer, Software Studios. This was actually the internal development studio of both games’ distributor, Electric Dreams Software, which was founded by British duo Rod Cousens and Paul Cooper, formerly of Quicksilva. (Quicksilva was mostly known for several hits with Jeff Minter, as well as Sandy White’s Spectrum classic, Ant Attack, which can lay claim to being not only the first isometric perspective game, but also (in the opinion of Edge magazine), the first example of the ‘survival horror’ genre). In a call-back to the second-ever Alien game, Quicksilva was bought by its publisher, Argus Press Software, whereupon Cousens and Cooper left to form Electric Dreams Software/Software Studios.
This time around, the gameplay was built entirely around one of the tensest sequences in the film, when the marines are first creeping into the atmosphere processing facility, guided by Ripley and Gorman from the APC via their individual helmet cameras. The player switched between characters, leading them through a huge labyrinth of rooms representing Hadley’s Hope. The game came with a giant map (one version of which can be found here), which was incredibly helpful but still wouldn’t save you from being punched in the brain by an Alien’s tongue. It was perhaps the tensest affair yet, making use of a claustrophobic first-person perspective and giving you limited ammunition with which to work your way through its massive guts. As you got further in, the strange Alien secretions became more and more prevalent, and you would have to sometimes shoot it off the walls to reveal the next door. But shoot too much, and you may not have enough bullets for when you finally encountered the Aliens. Some of the rooms would have no power, and the Aliens would come at you out of the dark. The pulse rifle SFX and the Aliens’ strange hissing were beautifully executed (at least, they were on my C64’s SID chip), and the whole thing truly was a nerve-wracking experience, exactly as it was in the film — death meant a face full of creeping Alien followed by a burst of static and a blank camera monitor. If faithful reproduction of the horror of the films is the key criterion by which to judge all Alien games, then Software Studios’ Aliens: The Computer Game was the best so far (and remains one of the best today).
Check out the full story behind this amazing picture here.
Just one other title rounds out the first decade of Alien gaming, a 1987 Japan-only MSX Aliens adaptation by a pre-Enix Square, the title of which amusingly translates into English as ‘Alien 2’. It’s also important to note that 1987 saw the debut of the Alien’s best friend, the Predator, in the classic Schwarzenegger film of the same name. Despite 20th Century Fox producing both the Alien and Predator film franchises, it would be seventeen years before they officially met in 2004’s first Alien vs. Predator film. That film was itself not the result of a penny finally dropping at Fox, or the result of almost two decades’ worth of comics, novelisations, toys and that crazy cartoon. Instead, the germ of the original idea to pair the two movie monsters up in an epic fight was formed in the late 1980s by the creative teams working on Dark Horse Comics’ separate Aliens and Predator licensed comics. The duo’s very first appearance together was in issue 36 of the company’s solicitations magazine, Dark Horse Comics Presents, in February 1990. It goes without saying that the full, limited series comic runs of AvP were pant-wettingly successful, and it is widely believed that the inclusion of the Alien skull in the Predators’ ship at the end of Predator 2, released at the end of the year in November 1990, was at least partly prompted by Fox eagerly noting the fan response to the comics series.
Right: The Japanese MSX Aliens game
[Image Credits: Dark Horse Comics (left); Microsoft Japan/Sanyo (right)]
In terms of computer and video games though, the next few years belonged to the Predator. Between 1987’s MSX Aliens game and the 1992 release of the film Alien 3 and its accompanying plethora of game adaptations, there was only one other digital outing for Giger’s creation: Konami’s 1990 Aliens arcade cabinet. This was a vivid, colourful, chunky, side-scrolling Aliens experience, with Player 1 controlling Ripley and the optional Player 2 as Hicks. I forget the story, despite having pumped tons of cash into the machine at the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus, but the Aliens in the game were many and varied — perhaps the most bonkers interpretations of the original concept in all of the creature’s history — and enormous fun to shoot. Occasional sections had you zooming up the screen in the APC, instead of running across it on foot, but it was always a brutal challenge. Or at least, the arcade I played it in had set it that way, the cunning bastards…
Click the pic for a closer look at six of the lucky winners!
[Image Credits: Within image]
So, 1992, and Alien 3 was the big-screen directorial debut of the highly distinctive commercials and music video director, David Fincher. Unfortunately, Fox were extremely nervous about following up the epoch-shattering success of Cameron’s Aliens, and relentlessly pestered Fincher, arguing about the script, questioning the budget, interfering with his work on a daily basis and driving the man to despair. The result was a notoriously botched job, unloved by nearly everybody on release, but one that has found some new appreciation in the 27 years since through various reconstructions and alternate cuts, most notably The Assembly Cut (a must-see, frankly).
Still, the film did not go without the fuss and fanfare you’d expect from the media campaign for a new Alien flick, and this included eight console and handheld adaptations, for the SEGA Game Gear, Mega Drive/Genesis and Master System; the Nintendo NES, SNES and Game Boy, and the Commodores, Amiga and 64. All of the games, except for the Game Boy version, were produced by one developer, Probe Entertainment Software (although the visually similar Mega Drive and Amiga versions — the latter probably being a port of the former — also credit Eden Entertainment Software). Probe were founded in England in 1984 and underwent a couple of name changes before being bought up by Acclaim Entertainment in 1995. In their various Probe forms, their back catalogue is absolutely massive, founded mostly on 8-bit home computer and 16-bit console titles and including dozens of well-known and mostly well-loved games. For the later PC crowd, these include the well-above par Die Hard Trilogy, Alien Trilogy (more on that later), the PC port of Capcom’s X-Men beat-’em-up, X-Men: Children of The Atom, and my own personal all-time favourite game, Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands (the PC port of Graftgold’s classic Amiga/ST port of Taito’s legendary arcade games). Probe/Acclaim were also prodigious film and TV tie-in producers, with computer and console versions of most of your favourite 80’s childhood films and cartoons in their catalogue.
[Image Credit: Probe Entertainment Software/Acclaim Interactive/Virgin Interactive]
The effect of this consolidated development process for the third Alien movie tie-in was to create, as you can see above, at least seven very similar games, all sharing a look, and as far as they were capable, as many of the same mechanics as possible. Only the Bits Studios-developed Game Boy version was necessarily much different. The action in all the games was a little bit abstracted from the movie, in comparison to the veracity of the previous Alien and Aliens games, and took the form of a side-scrolling arcade shooter. The backdrops were largely generic, although certain visual motifs from the film made it through, such as the thick plastic curtains from the medical ward and the stainless steel panelling in the mess hall/meeting room. Ripley, in every incarnation of the game, ran around hairless and in combat fatigues and a white vest, also as per much of the film. And, of course, there was the Dog-Alien. In the film this was notable for introducing a concept to the canon film universe that had only been talked about before by Ridley Scott, but had existed for quite a while in the spin-off fiction; that of the Alien taking the form of its host creature. From the perspective of Alien gaming, though, it was not so unusual.
The other noteworthy item here is the inclusion of a Commodore 64 version, one of the last proper games made for the venerable C64 before production was ceased and it was removed from market in 1995. To be quite honest, it boggles my mind that well into the era of 16-bit computing there was still a demand for the thing (and I say this as a proud former C64 owner myself), although this demand was mostly from Britain and Europe, while the Americans had largely abandoned it by 1991.
whilst tripping on anything. [Image Credits: Konami] [See end of article for source credits]
Anyway, let’s pause here for a moment and take stock. The various Alien 3 games were released across a period of two years, from the Commodores and Master System with the film’s release in 1992, to the Game Gear version in 1994. That was it for Alien 3 in gaming history, with the exception of SEGA’s 1993 Alien 3: The Gun arcade cabinet, which capitalised on the growing trend for attaching plastic light guns to games. As with all of its arcade outings, the Aliens came in a variety of colourful shades but continued to explode in showers of acidic green goo, and that’s about all that needs to be said there.
1994 marks quite an important year in Alien gaming, as it brings the Alien and the Predator together for the first time on any kind of screen, but perhaps not in the game you’re thinking of right now… Join me here next week for the next leg of the journey, and in the meantime, hit the comments below and share your Alien memories, gaming or otherwise!
Many thanks to the scholars at mobygames.com for the MSX pictures, and the dedicated preservationists at Museum of the Game / KLOV.com / The International Arcade Museum for the Konami Aliens cabinet and screenshot pictures.
An earlier version of this article was previously published by this author at XP4T.com in 2015
