“The ALIENS are fast, spit acid, and are right behind YOU!”
Alien 3 (NES)| Developer: Probe| Publisher: LJN| Released: March 1993
Talking about some of the games based on what may be the worst Alien movie out of the original quadrilogy? Sure, why not. Despite… most of the recent flicks in the series, I still love the franchise, and these games have some interesting trivia, like which one adapts the film’s tragic ending. It may not be the one that you’d think.
The NES, Sega Master System, Genesis, and Game Gear games based on the flick have the same basic premise: As Ripley, you have to run around the levels and rescue the other prisoners and reach the exit under the time limit. Depending on which version you’re playing, this is easier said than done.
Contrary to the flick’s premise, there are numerous aliens wandering around instead of just one, and Ripley is packing heat to deal with them, but because all of the prisoners are trapped in Xenomorph webbing, none of them are free to help her. The Super NES version of the game is a bit more involved because you acquire multiple objectives per level, and you can do them in any order you wish.
I didn’t even know that this game had a sensor. It only detects prisoners, and doesn’t suggest a good route to find them. It’s not intuitive. Every mission is a maze.
Your Pulse Gun can overheat.
No wonder this game isn’t very good: it’s basically an escort mission! Well, the escortees don’t move, but you know what I mean.
A critical flaw of the NES game is that, while it’s basically a demake of the Genesis version, the time limit is way too strict! I swear that it moves ever-so-slightly faster than it actually should.
Alien 3 (Genesis)| Released: 1992
THIS version has a temporary motion detector for both aliens AND prisoners. You start off with it, at least on the first level.
Hawhaw, this alien keeps throwing itself at the door. That’s fun OHMIGOD IT DESTROYED THE DOOR KILL IT
This game may technically be more fair than the NES version, but it’s hard in other ways. The aliens are far more relentless. There are so many in each area, you can imagine a clown car of aliens somewhere offscreen.
The levels are slightly more varied than the NES version, but are still a bit samey.
The fourth level has a lot of blood and facehuggers. Ew!
I can’t decide if the music here is really good or annoying.
Facehuggers are real mofos in this game; if they grab hold of you, your health drains quickly.
The NES and Genesis games based on Alien 3 are really more of a curiosity than a must-play/must-beat. Their gameplay loops may initially impress, but soon show their limitations. The games have some decent style, however, like Matt Furniss’ music in the Genesis port (which I came down negatively on in level four, apparently, but the soundtrack is cool overall), and how the game over scene works. If you fail to rescue all of the prisoners within the time limit, you’re “treated” to the lovely sight of the remaining prisoners dying via chestburster.
I also played some of Alien 3 on the Super NES, though I couldn’t find my notes on it, if I ever had any. Arguably, it has the best audio and visuals out of all of the console Alien 3 games. The soundtrack is totally different from the other versions, and it even worked in a digitized voice sample from Bill Paxton’s character from Aliens during the – you guessed it – game over screen. It doesn’t match Alien 3, but it’s still awesome. For one final piece of trivia: this, of all of the versions, is the one that faithfully adapts the flick’s ending where Ripley kills herself to kill the alien inside of her.
All in all, I think that Probe should have been proud of their work trying to adapt Alien 3 into a game, even if they had to adapt some elements of Aliens to make a more substantial title. Which versions should you check out? I suggest checking out both of the Genesis and SNES versions, but skipping the NES version due to its redundancy with the superior Genesis port.
It should be noted that, just like the flick itself, the games prove to be divisive. Some, like Kim Justice, consider the Genesis version to be a cult classic, and Nintendo Power and SNES Drunk recommended the SNES game (NP even put it at 100 on their 100 best games of all time list in their 100th issue!), while others came down mixed-to-negative on it.
A memory that I always have of the Genesis version is courtesy of this early ‘90s strategy guide I own that had one or two pages of tips per game, for a bunch of games. It referred to the bosses as “guardians”, which was one of the indicators that this guide was actually written in the UK. It seems that using “guardians” instead of “bosses” has long since fallen by the wayside in UK gaming media. This guide also featured a two-page spread for Phantasy Star II and III. For the latter, considering the size constraints, it was mainly just a summary of each of the four potential final quests, revealing just how samey the game really was, heh. It may be fun to do a post about the most memorable strategy guides that I own.
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