THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE



ALIENS



PUBLISHER

Electric Dreams



AUTHOR



YEAR

1987



CATEGORY

Arcade Adventure



DESCRIPTION

Aliens is a first person arcade game with a strategic element.



CONTROLS

Keyboard, Kempston, Cursor



 KEYS :   Up        }

          Down      }

          Left      } Cursor keys

          Right     }

          Fire      }



          Ripley         R

          Gorman         G

          Hicks          H

          Bishop         I

          Vasquez        V

          Burke          B





INSTRUCTIONS

Ripley returns to the Aliens' planet with a squad of crack

Colonial Marines in order to find out what's happened to the

colonists sent there. It's your task to control her and the squad

to penetrate the Acheron base and rescue the survivors - if there

are any...

 

The action takes place in first-person perspective, with you

seeing the view though the helmet camera of Ripley and the five

Marines. You can move the sights of your Pulse Rifle to track the

aliens or to turn around in the room - the camera follows the

gunsight.



As well as the main display, the console below displays the

status of the six team members. This monitors the life status of

the members - as they near exhaustion, the status bar flashes and

if an Alien is in the room with them it changes colour. The

number of the room occupied by that character is also given. In

the centre of the console is the current character, with a

bio-functions trace on the left and the remaining ammunition on

the right.



You can move around by using the doors - move the gunsight over

the doorway and press fire to pass through. Rapid movement can

be made by ordering the character to move up to nine room to the

North, South, East or West. Drawing a map is obviously a good

idea here!



If an Alien comes out of hiding or enters the current room, a

proximity alarm sounds a warning. You have only a few seconds to

shoot the Alien before it makes a meal of your forehead... When

this happens, the viewscreen dissolves into static as your

character dies. If a team member is not under your direct control

when he or she meets an Alien, he/she is captured by the Alien

and impregnated - the status bar turns yellow. If the character

is not rescued quickly, he/she will soon die as a chestburster

hatches.



Ultimately, in the depths of the base, you may meet the Alien

Queen in her brood chamber. She will be well guarded...



SEQUELS/PREQUELS

There are quite a few Aliens games.  There is Aline by Mindscape,

which is a much more strategic affair, and there was also a US

version of Aliens (this one being the superior UK version) which

was a collection of sub-games.



SCORES RECEIVED

Crash : "It is just very compelling." RATING : 84% (CRASH #37,

February 1987)

















































