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Alien (1982 video game)

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Alien
Developer(s)Fox Video Games[1]
Publisher(s)Fox Video Games[1]
Designer(s)Doug Neubauer
Platform(s)Atari 2600
ReleaseNovember 1982
Genre(s)Maze[1]
Mode(s)Single-player

Alien is a 1982 maze video game for the Atari 2600 published by Fox Video Games. The game has the player control a human moving through the hallways of a space ship avoiding the adult alien and destroying the small alien eggs.

Along with Mega Force and M*A*S*H, Alien was among the tie-in video games made for 20th Century Fox's video game division programmed by Doug Neubauer. Reviews from The Video Game Update and video game critic Brett Weiss found the game to be derivative of other games like Pac-Man.

Gameplay

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  • Maze level
    Maze level
  • Bonus round
    Bonus round

The goal of the game is to move your human character through the hallways of the space ship and crush all the Alien eggs which have been placed there by interacting with them. The goal is crush all the eggs, and collect items for points. The player must avoid or destroy any adult Aliens who also move through the halls. The aliens can be halted briefly in their path by hitting them with a flame thrower, which can only be used once per life. Connecting with a pulsar on the map will make the aliens turn blue for a short time period and killable by interacting with them. If an alien interacts with the player, they lose a life. The game ends when the player runs out of lives. The game used the difficulty switches on the Atari 2600 which changes whether the pulsars make the aliens turn blue or not and changes the movement of the aliens from random to a fixed pattern.[2]

Once all the Alien eggs are destroyed, the player enters a bonus round where the goal is to move to the top of the screen and grab the prize shown there within eight seconds. The player does not lose a life in this round.[2]

Development

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20th Century Fox formed Fox Video Games Inc. in 1982 to produce video games for the Atari Video Computer System (later known as the Atari 2600).[3][4] Along with a novelization and the 1984 Alien video game, this Atari 2600 game was one of the first follow-ups from 20th Century Fox that directly borrow plot elements from the film Alien (1979) in the Alien franchise.[5]

Doug Neubauer worked as an independent contractor making film tie-in games for 20th Century Fox's new game division making games such as Mega Force, M*A*S*H and Alien. Neubauer had hoped that making several video game adaptations would lead to making a film license like Star Wars, finding that "just because a company makes a movie doesn't mean they have the rights to make a video of the movie, Case in point, Star Wars. They didn't have the rights to it."[6]

Release and reception

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Alien was released for the Atari 2600 in November 1982.[7] From contemporary reviews, The Video Game Update did not recommend the game, stating it was a "one more rehash of the eat-the-dot maze" finding the graphics to be "only fair and game play is just too much like other games already available to create much interest."[8] Writing for Arcade Express in 1983, Tracie Forman found the graphics to be cute the game mechanics lacked originality to garner much excitement.[9]

From retrospective reviews, Brett Weiss in his book Classic Home Video Games 1972-1984 referred to the game as a Pac-Man clone, stating that it was "one of the best movie-based games ever released on the Atari 2600" and that it was derivative of Pac-Man (1980) and Freeway (1981), but still "highly playable."[1] Reviewing the game for the AllGame, Weiss added that the other drawback was the cartoonish depiction of the aliens, but that "given the graphical limitations of the system, this weakness is understandable."[10] In his overview in video games based on Alien, Graeme Mason of Retro Gamer wrote that the game "there is a sincere element of panic and fear as the player is talked through the blue maze" concluding that the game was "commendable, if bland".[11]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Weiss 2007, p. 31.
  2. ^ a b Fox Video Games, Inc. 1982.
  3. ^ McCullaugh 1982, p. 4.
  4. ^ Montfort 2006.
  5. ^ Fleury & Mamber 2019, p. 33.
  6. ^ Gamasutra.
  7. ^ The Video Game Update 1982.
  8. ^ The Video Game Update 1982b.
  9. ^ Forman 1983.
  10. ^ Weiss.
  11. ^ Mason 2019, p. 62.

Sources

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  • Alien - Game Instructions. Fox Video Games, Inc. 1982.
  • "Video Games' First Space Opera: Exploring Atari's Star Raiders". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on February 27, 2008. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  • "Availability Update". The Video Game Update. Vol. 1, no. 9. December 1982.
  • "Atari 2600-Compatible". The Video Game Update. Vol. 1, no. 9. December 1982.
  • Fleury, James; Mamber, Stephen (2019). "The (Im)perfect Organism: Dissecting the Alien Media Franchise". In Fleury, James; Hartzheim, Bryan Hikari; Mamber, Stephen (eds.). The Franchise Era: Managing Media in the Digital Economy. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1474477741.
  • Forman, Tracie (March 17, 1983). "The Hotseat: Reviews of New Products" (PDF). Arcade Express. Vol. 1, no. 17. pp. 6–7. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
  • Mason, Graeme (2019). "The History of Alien Videogames". Retro Gamer. No. 199. Future plc. ISSN 1742-3155.
  • McCullaugh, Jim (June 19, 1982). "Movie, Video Giants Join Game Supremacy Battle". Billboard. Penske Media Corporation. ISSN 0006-2510.
  • Montfort, Nick (December 2006). "Combat in Context". Game Studies. 6 (1). ISSN 1604-7982. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
  • Weiss, Brett Alan. "Alien". AllGame. Archived from the original on November 15, 2014. Retrieved January 8, 2024.
  • Weiss, Brett (2007). Classic Home Video Games 1972-1984. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7864-3226-4.
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