Alien
63K plays 1982 #Adventure
Alien is a 1982 maze video game based on the 1979 film of the same name, published by Fox Video Games for the Atari 2600. 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. In some gameplay modes, they can collect a flamethrower to fend off aliens or collect items to make them vulnerable to the player's touch. After clearing a maze of its eggs, the players have a bonus round where they must reach the top of the screen to collect a prize.
Along with Mega Force and M*A*S*H, Alien was programmed by Doug Neubauer and among the many film tie-in video games made for 20th Century Fox's video game division, Fox Video Games. It was one of the first transmedial works in the Alien franchise since the release of the film.
Reviews from The Video Game Update and IGN found the game to be derivative of other earlier games like Pac-Man (1980). Other reviewers commented on the graphics finding that Xenomorphs either resembles venus fly traps or came off as cute. Journalist Robin Sloan summarized that neither Alien (1982) or many of the other video games in the Alien franchise were as influential as the films were for other later video games.
From Wikipedia's article Alien (1982 video game), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Controls
This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.
Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.
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Controls
This is a PC game: it uses the keyboard the way it did under MS-DOS, and the mouse where the game supports it. Click the game screen first so it gets your key presses.
Many DOS games start with a menu or ask a question first — read the screen and answer with the keyboard. Arrow keys, Enter, Space, Ctrl and Alt are the usual game keys.
2.5 Could be better
Players 66 · 75 votes
No critic scores found for this game: this is the players' rating.
Review scorecard
- Graphics 2.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Sound 2.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Control 2.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Fun Factor 2.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
Overall fallback: Players 66 · 75 votes. The same 66/100 overall rating fills missing categories using the face scale; these are not separate category scores. Player rating; no critic scores available.
What the reviews talk about
Key wordsblandcutefaithfulplayablefun
What the critics said
Writing for Arcade Express in 1983, Tracie Forman found the graphics to be cute while Alien gameplay "lacked originality to garner much excitement."
— Arcade
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."
— AllGame
Dan Whitehead in Retro Gamer magazine complimented that Alien was at least "semi-faithful to the film" and generally fun to play, but that the games graphics were a poor representation of the film, describing the titular aliens as resembling venus flytraps.
— Retro Gamer (Dan Whitehead)
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".
— Retro Gamer (Graeme Mason)
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 while being derivative of Pac-Man (1980) and Freeway (1981), but still "highly playable."
— Video Games· about another version
From the Reception section of Wikipedia's Alien (1982 video game) article, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The words are the critics'; their full reviews are on the publishers' pages.
Scores
- AllGame 3.5/5
- Arcade Express 7/10
- Retro Gamer 3/5
From the review table of Wikipedia's article. The face takes, first that applies: the Metascore for this platform, GameRankings' average, our average of the critics (one number per publication, a panel averaged), one review alone, the players' rating. Critics and players are never mixed.
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